Take These 3 Steps If Your Child's Identity Has Been Compromised
We have four (vivacious) daughters. If you were to combine the money in their piggy banks, it wouldn't get you to far. Yet, our girls are a prime target for identity thieves. One in 10 children has a Social Security number that is used by someone else before becoming an adult, according to a report by CyLab, a research center at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. The report also revealed that the rate of identity theft among children was 51 times higher than that among adults in the study.
If you discover your child has a credit report with fraudulent information, take these steps:
Step. 1: Report it to your local law enforcement.
Step 2: Contact each credit reporting agency. You'll be asked to verify his or her status as a minor—with a birth certificate, for example—and instructed to send a letter asking it to remove every account and collection notice that is associated with the report.
Step 3: Place a 90-day fraud alert on your child's files and order a credit freeze to prevent any potential creditors from requesting your child’s report while the errors are being corrected.
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