When to Check Your Child's Credit Report

When will your child have a credit report?  When should you check?  When should you be worried that your child does have a credit report or his or her credit is being used illegally?  These are all questions that parents should ask themselves but often do not.

Typically children do not have a credit report until they actually obtain their first credit card, car loan or other financial account that is reported to the credit bureaus.  This should not be until they reach the age of majority in your state and can legally enter into contracts.  Or possibly when you add them as an authorized user on your credit cards, not that I am advising that you do that!

However, children are often the victim of identity theft long before they are old enough to obtain their own credit.  Oftentimes, it is the children's own parents that are the identity thieves.  A credit application appears one day bearing the child's name.  A quick application later and a credit card is issued in the child's name.  An unscrupulous parent can then make charges that never are re-paid and that do not affect the parent's credit report.

And it does not have to be a parent that commits the crime.  Children can be the victims of identity thieves that are complete strangers.  Or they can be "merged" with another adult consumer whose name, Social Security number or other personal identifiers are similar to your child's. While the credit bureaus should never allow this to happen by simply complying with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, it does happen because the credit bureaus are known to utilize faulty matching logic that allows such mergers of credit files to happen.  And when it does, the adult consumer's credit can and will land on your child's credit report, which can cause your child to be saddled with a bad credit history before he or she even begins their adult life.

So how do you protect your child's credit?  What are the warning signs that a child has become the victim of identity theft?

You should check your child's credit report with the big three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union).  I suggest doing so when your child turns 16.  At that point, the response from the credit bureaus should be that they have no file on your child.  But, if there is a file, then you should obtain a copy (as the parent and guardian of your child) and confirm that no accounts have been opened in your child's name.  If there have been, dispute them to the credit bureaus, including a copy of your child's birth certificate to prove that he or she is under age and thus not legally capable of entering into a contract to open the fraudulently opened account(s).

Should you ever check your child's credit before their sixteenth birthday?  Yes - if your child starts receiving credit card applications, collection letters, collection calls or anything indicating that they have been active in the credit arena.  This could be an indication that your child's identity has already been stolen.  At that point, despite your child's age, you should check his or her credit report and dispute anything that is not your child's credit.

Ideally, such disputes will lead to the child's credit reports being corrected.  But, as often is the case, the credit bureaus will not perform reasonable investigations of the disputes.  At that point, you should consult an attorney like me who specializes in Fair Credit Reporting Act litigation.

Is your child a victim of ID theft?

Identity thieves are not ones to discriminate based on age.   In fact, some of their favorite targets are children.  This is so for various reasons, not the least of which is that their crime is likely to go undiscovered longer if the ID theft victim is a child.

A recent study performed by Debix, an identity theft monitoring company, found that 4000 children's identities had been stolen or otherwise compromised out of only 40,000 children surveyed.

So what do you do to protect your children's identity?  First, when your child turns 16, check his credit report.  This should leave enough time to correct any errors caused by any identity theft before the child starts college and starts needing credit in his own name.

Second, watch out for any early signs of identity theft.  If your minor son or daughter starts getting collection calls or preapproved credit offers, then you should request his credit reports from the Big Three to see what's up.

When you request the report, the credit bureaus should respond that there is no report regarding your child.  If they have a report, then your child is either the victim of identity theft or a mixed file.  How do you tell the difference?  Two ways - first, if all three bureaus have a file on your child, its probably identity theft.  If only one has a file, its likely a mixed file.  But, the only way to know for sure is to contact the creditors who appear on the report and find out what Social Security number was used to open the accounts.  If its your child's SSN, then he or she is a victim of identity theft.  If its a different but similar SSN, its a mixed file and all the blame lies with the credit bureau's faulty matching logic.

In either scenario, the first step after learning of the problem is to dispute the errors to the credit bureaus in writing.  If that doesn't work, after multiple tries, then you need to hire someone like me to sue the bureaus' for your child.  Remember, I'm only an e-mail away.

Identity theft - the latest summer risk for kids?

Its summer.  I know this due to the repeated "I'm bored" comments I hear from my nine year old.

Summer also brings additional risk of identity theft to children.  Thanks to the additional free time caused by the long days of summer, children spend more time in front of the computer or on their internet capable cell phones.  With this additional time online comes the additional risk of identity theft.

Why would an identity thief want to steal the identity of a child?  Basically because the child's credit history is a blank slate and can be misused longer than an adult's credit history, since the kid is not out doing the things that cause identity theft victims to learn of the theft of their identity, like applying for credit.

“The younger the victim, the more time these thieves have to exploit the child’s identity,” said Sandy Chalmers, Administrator of the Wisconsin Division of Trade and Consumer Protection. “Identity theft against a child can go undetected for years and do a lot of damage to their good name.”


So, parents, please warn your kids not to give out personal information online unless and only if its to a reliable source.  And, be sure to monitor what your kids are doing online.  A little bit of prevention can prevent a lot of problems later on.

Theft of a child's identity

Bob Segall with wthr.com writes about the theft of children's identities. I have seen this fairly often in my representation of people with errors on their credit reports. A good percentage of the time the errors result from an identity theft that occurred before the victim was 18. What's even more tragic is that it often turns out to be a family member who steals the child's identity.

Here's the article written by Bob Segall -

"Imagine someone stealing your child's identity. It happens to thousands of kids every year and most parents have no idea how to stop it. 13 Investigates shows you how to protect your children from this devastating crime, and it's free.

Christina Morog had a credit card before she learned how to ride a tricycle. According to her credit report, Morog opened the credit card account when she was one year old.

'I would never open a credit card when I was one,' she said. 'I didn't do it.'

It turns out someone used Morog's social security number to get a CitiBank credit card in 1987. She discovered the problem almost two decades later when she asked for a copy of her credit report but, by then, it was too late. The credit card linked to her social security number had a $30,000 balance.

'I was sort of in shock. I've never even seen $30,000,' Morog told 13 Investigates. 'It's scary because you hear about people that can never get this stuff off their credit.'

Morog's story is not uncommon.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were more than 34,000 incidents of childhood identity theft between 2005 and 2007, and the actual number of cases is likely much higher because the crime often goes undetected for years.

'Bad guys love child social security numbers because it's kind of a sleeper account,' explained Steve Ely, president of consumer services for the Equifax credit bureau. 'If you can get ahold of a child's social security number when they're two years old, you've got 14, 15, 16 years of being able to use that identity without potentially getting caught.'

Four-year-old with a mortgage payment

Recent cases show why some unscrupulous adults target kids for their credit:

In January, prosecutors charged a Florida woman with stealing her 7-year-old daughter's identity to open a credit card account. The woman faced felony charges of grand theft and fraudulent use of personal information after her estranged husband discovered a maxed-out, overdue credit card had been opened in their daughter's name.

Earlier this year, police in California arrested a man for allegedly stealing the identity of a four-year-old child who died in 1984. Investigators from the San Bernardino County Disrict Attorney's office said the man used the deceased boy's identity to buy a home and a vehicle and to obtain several credit cards.

And last year near Chicago, a man was charged with felony identity theft after he allegedly created a fake social security card bearing the name and social security number of a four-year-old boy. Police say the man used the victim's information to obtain a truck, three jobs, gas and electrical service for his home, a credit card, unemployment benefits and over $60,000 in pay and services.

'That's scary and that's alarming,' said Chrissy Shah, while playing with her three sons at Indianapolis' Holliday Park. Like most parents, Shah has never checked her kids' credit files. Because children are not supposed to have credit (and, therefore, no credit history and no credit file) most parents assume there is no reason to ask if a credit file exists.

According to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police, childhood identity theft is most often committed by parents, but teachers, coaches and babysitters have also been charged with the crime. Police say social security numbers (for both adults and children) should be provided only when absolutely necessary and should otherwise be closely protected.

Monitoring Your Kid's Credit is Free

But with thousands of cases of childhood identity theft each year, major credit bureaus say parents shouldn't make assumptions when it comes to their kids' credit. And monitoring your child's credit is free.

'We can let the parent know if indeed there is a credit file opened in that child's name,' explained Ely. 'If you were to discover that your 9-year-old has a credit file open, that would probably indicate that a bad guy has gotten ahold of their social security number and created a new identity .... If a file does exist, that's a pretty big red flag that there's something wrong there and you need to look into that.'

Equifax, TransUnion and Experian all allow parents to request what's called a Minor Child Credit File Check. While the check-up is free, the credit bureaus do require parents to submit copied documentation such as a drivers license, social security card and/or birth certificate to verify identities before they will release credit file information.

If you request a file check for your kids, you'll then be notified with one of two responses: either your child has no credit file (that's good) or a credit file linked to your child's social security number already exists (that's trouble). If your child has a credit file, you will also be told what steps are needed to protect your child's credit and identity, and how to remove any fraudulent activity from your child's credit file.

In Morog's case, it took nearly two years to wipe her credit file clean.

'The faster you can catch it, the less amount of problems that are going to happen,' she said. 'For me, it took like eighteen years before I found out and then it feels like you're running around in circles to get it fixed.'

For the full article, click here - http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=10741483&nav=9Tai.