This content was created by Robert Siciliano. This content was uploaded by Robert Siciliano. This is a YouTube interview titled "Child Identity Theft Expert Robert Siciliano Discussing Protection for @McAfee" (posted April 11, 2011). The excerpt is a short interview/talk in which a host (SPEAKER A) discusses child identity theft with identity-theft expert Robert Siciliano (SPEAKER B). They cover a recent study's findings (e.g., ~40,000 child profiles checked with about 10% affected; 4,300 children with compromised records, 300 under age 5), how parents can detect and prevent theft (checking a child's credit report, credit freezes), and mention McAfee Identity Protection monitoring services. The context is a consumer-protection segment focused on protecting children from identity fraud.
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Over the last couple of weeks, we've been trying to help you take charge of situations, and this one is an important one. The first real study is out showing that children are genuine targets for identity theft, more than you might imagine. And if you think you know everything you should do, well, listen up anyway, because children have no records, they're unlikely to even notice they've been had their identity stolen for years. So today's Take Charge Consumer Protection segment brings you some of those tips. And joining me now, identity theft expert Robert Siciliano. Robert, this is really important, and a lot of people do think they know everything they need to know. It's as little as your child's Social Security number, I understand, and sometimes even schools will ask you for that or other activities. Should you not give even the Social Security number?
Unfortunately, in a society that has yet to effectively identify who we are in a way that can prevent fraud, you're gonna have to give out your Social Security number to the soccer coach, the school, to insurance companies. And when that occurs, everybody who receives that information, the— your primary identifier, your SSN, they can use that to commit fraud.
Now they can apply for a gun permit, it was found. This is the first study to quantify it. 40,000 children's personal profiles were checked, 10% had had their information hacked. And they usually don't find out about it until they apply for a college loan or apply for a mortgage themselves. Some of them, they even found out as adults that it happened when they were kids, and they were facing foreclosures they didn't even know about. Let's go through some of the tips on how to prevent this from happening. Should you check your child's credit report? Is that even possible?
See, a child under the age of 18 should not have a credit report. If they do have a credit report, that means that their identity was stolen, potentially stolen. So, but what I recommend that people do is they do check their child's credit, and if they don't find a credit report, generally they're gonna be in pretty good shape. If you check your child's credit once a year, contacting the 3 major credit bureaus, you should be in pretty good shape.
Okay, and ask them if credit has been established in your child's name. Now beyond that, you can freeze your child's credit till they're 18 or whenever they need it. Adults, I hear, are doing that too, freezing their credit. How does that work?
So when you freeze your credit, basically you are contacting the credit bureaus, you're filling out an affidavit, you're providing them with information, and that information allows them to lock down your credit, making it difficult for the bad guy to open up new credit accounts under your name. And it also prevents you from getting credit, but at the same time, they provide you a username and a password, a website to visit, and it allows you to thaw your credit making it possible for you to get credit at that time.
All right, and people can consult professionals like yourself to help them clean it up. In this study, 4,300 children were found to have distressed identity records, and 300 of them were under 5 years old. So it's never too soon to be thinking about this. How do you know you're putting your child's credit history, if you need to resolve it, in the hands of a true professional?
So you're not going to know that your child's identity is stolen until you start getting phone calls from bill collectors, till they turn 18 and maybe they try to get a job or apply for credit and apply for a school loan and they're denied. That's when you find out your child's identity was stolen. Or again, you know, you might have a 2-year-old who's getting calls from bill collectors saying that they just bought a Mercedes-Benz and didn't pay the bill. That's a problem. I work with McAfee Identity Protection. What they do is they ping your child's credit 24/7, 365. And if credit is established, you're going to be made aware of that. You really can't go it alone for any length of time without significant damage being done. So, for example, if you check your credit— child's credit today and nothing shows up, but you don't check it again for a year, in that course of a year, a lot of damage can occur. So parents really do need help in that regard. Going it alone really could put the child at significant risk.
And that's why we're talking about it today. I hope people will take charge of this issue and make sure it doesn't happen to them. Thanks so much for being with us.
