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More Than 1 Million Kids Had Their Identities Stolen in 2017 (nypost.com)
More than 1 million children were victims of identity fraud in 2017, a new study from Javelin Strategy & Research found, costing a total of $2.6 billion. From a report: With limited financial history or existing account activity, children are the most likely to become victims of new-account fraud, the research showed. These attacks can occur before children even become active internet users, with some two-thirds of victims being under the age of eight. The overall numbers are likely even higher, said Al Pascual, research director at Javelin said, since their study relied on parents and guardians reporting cases of identity theft. In many cases, the parent or another relative may be the one using a child's identity to start a new account.
Is there any particular reason to go after a child's identity? It's not as though it's useful for opening a line of credit or anything like that. About the only reasons I can think of is to serve as chaff or a distraction for more targeted activities, because it's an automated process that doesn't know any better and is only doing so for some kind of click fraud to make the clicks seem more legitimate, or because the competition for private grade schools has grown much more fierce and if one person steal the other parent's children's identities they can sign those children up for gay vegan white nationalist hate groups or some such thing that will guarantee that their own spawn has a better chance of getting into the school.
The overall numbers are likely even higher, said Al Pascual, research director at Javelin said, since their study relied on parents and guardians reporting cases of identity theft. In many cases, the parent or another relative may be the one using a child's identity to start a new account.
That indicates to me that the exact numbers are hard to arrive at because of confounding factors. One is that it relies on self-reporting which may not accurately allow researchers to determine the real extent of the issue. The other is that the parents in their capacity as legal guardians may be creating the accounts for the child in which case it may be difficult to classify as identity theft. In some circumstances this is a legal requirement since children under a certain age are prohibited from having an account without some kind of parental permission or oversight.
What I was getting at is trying to understand for what purpose anyone would steal a child's identity, which I don't believe the summary explains. The article provides some clarification to this point, that in 33% of cases a family friend is signing someone up for an account that they don't want, but doesn't indicate what the other 66% of cases are for. If lines of credit are being opened under a child's name, there's a bigger problem than just identity theft. Maybe that's possible and I'm simply under the misinformed impression that financial institutions were doing any kind of due diligence.
Anecdotal story: me, 40 year old, fully employed for as long as I can remember, show up at a bank's desk, get rejected from various offers because of what I'm being told is "not enough history". How the hell does a 18 old get anything but a lollipop?
Banks and others are being negligent when they offer loans and other contracts to people they know are minors.
The first thing they should be asking for is proof of emancipation or a parent or guardian's signature.
Second, because of the amount of fraud involved, they need to do some "due diligence" in verifying the emancipation order is legit or verifying the purported parent's signatures are legit.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Or health insurers who require enough data to clone your kids, but can't adequately secure their data warehouses.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Replying to my own post before others say "parents:"
Parents committing fraud will be very difficult to detect until the child/victim discovers it on his own.
How can a bank tell the difference between a kid opening a credit card at his parent's urging so he can build up a credit history, and a parent opening the same account for fraudulent purposes? It is difficult or impossible without a personal interview, which isn't something most banks are going to do for your average consumer account.
But as for other perpetrators - banks should be diligent about authenticating the child-applicant as well as the parent/legal guardians who are signing the documents and about authenticating that they really are the parents or legal guardians.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, damn me for giving Blue Cross my children's Social Security numbers and a host of other information, as they demanded in order to insure us. Totally my fault they turned out to have shitty security. :eyeroll:
A child's identity has no good history, but it has no bad history either, so it's suitable for, oh, getting utility services, or low-limit credit cards, or maybe a low-value loan with collateral, like a used car. Stuff that we typically expect college students who've just moved away from their parents to need to do.
as to due diligence, if the SSN has no history, then the credit bureaus will have no data attached to it. So the financial institution has no basis to decide that the applicant isn't the holder of the SSN, unless they're really on the ball and demand both a photo ID and the SSN card itself, and refuse to accept discrepancies in the name... which is rare.
No rusty shackleford is the one with all the bad loans and not dale gribble or dale's dead bug
They could use technology far more intelligently, they could come up with far more intelligent rules. They could let customers choose more secure options but they don't, the banks are the enablers of fraud. They rely far too much on assuming that if someone supplies the right ID 1 time that the account is secure from there onwards.
UK has chip and pin, yet the shops allowed the fraudster simply to verbally give card details, they asked for no ID, no card and gave the fraudster 100s worth of goods, unbelievable.
Even when my account went 5x past my overdraft, they still allowed the odd purchases! I said to my bank, can you not allow purchases beyond my overdraft, they said I can't request that!!!!! Pure unadulterated stupidity, they deserve to be defrauded.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
So... Business As Usual and THINK OF THE CHILDREN ?
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
There is no telling how many unwashed fat 50-ish men are on the Internet posing as 14-year-old virgin girls.
That's been going on since way back into the BBS days.
I am not faulting your parenting - but in my case I refused to order a SSN for my daughter. She can apply for one when, and if, she feels she needs one when she gets her first job.
I wonder if this is feasible for many people? Probably not, as you need their SSN to claim them on taxes.
Take off every 'sig' !!
Also required to get a passport.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."