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It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your children’s identities are?
Identity protection is a priority for everyone, and children are as exposed as anyone—maybe even more. Obtaining childrens’ Social Security numbers (SSNs) is the main way that attackers can obtain their identities, which they then use to open credit cards and manipulate finances.
Stuart Vaeth, SVP of strategic business development at identity management company Trua, told IT Brew that the age gap between children acquiring an SSN and coming of age to use it is a major reason that ID numbers are stolen. They’re right there for the taking.
“It’s well understood by thieves and everybody that children don’t use their SSNs until they’re 18—they get a credit card and they start to use their SSN for applying,” Vaeth said. “So, those SSNs are right to be stolen and used without any detection.”
Costly pursuit. According to 2021 findings from research firm Javelin, identity theft affects over 1 million children a year and costs close to $1 billion annually. SSNs are widely available on the dark web—if yours isn’t yet, “it will be,” Huntress CEO Kyle Hanslovan told The Hill earlier this year—and the personal identification numbers are used for credit applications, ecommerce, loans, and other services.
In August, Senators Maggie Hassan and John Cornyn introduced the bipartisan Credit Freeze for Newborns Act, which would “allow parents to contact only one of the agencies to freeze their children’s credit file and then require the notified credit bureau to inform the other credit bureaus of the freeze within three days.”
It’s a way of protecting against potential disaster, the kind that can result in high costs for families looking to repair the damage. The legislation is a good start, Vaeth said, but consumers should be freezing their credit—and the credit of their children—as soon as possible.
“They don’t need to wait for this law to happen, which may or may not happen, given the election,” Vaeth said, adding, “There are various services, as well as going directly to credit bureaus to freeze your child’s credit, basically by freezing their SSN so their SSN can’t be used to apply for credit. That’s a very simple step.”