Why Does Child Identity Theft Happens

You work hard to keep your credit in good standing. In today's world, it is difficult to survive without a good credit rating.

When you need to get a loan for a home or buy a car, you need to be able to count on your credit to get you approved. It may be hard to imagine, then, that many young adults who apply for their first credit car or try to buy a car will find that their applications are denied due to a bad credit report. Why? Because of child identity theft.

You may think that if you have never gotten a loan or a credit card before that you can't possibly have anything bad against your name. Unfortunately, the increase in child identity theft has changed this into a reality for many young adults. Often, it is the parents or another close family member who steals a child's identity.

If someone else does commit child identity theft, then the likelihood of finding out about it is very small. Parents don't have any reason to run a credit check on a child so they won't find out until the child is grown and tries to get credit. By that time, it is nearly impossible for the individual to clear their credit record, especially if they don't know who committed the child identity theft against them.

Now that children are issued a social security number early in life, they are at higher risk of identity theft. The more documents that you have with your child's social security number on them, the higher the risk for child identity theft. Once a child enters school, their social security number is used for identification purposes. People don't always take precautions to protect children as they would adults since they assume there is nothing to protect them from. In reality, they need protection more than adults. Until social security numbers are no longer used on anything except social security matters, the risk of child identity theft will continue.

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