Your child’s captivating personality is not the only reason for a stranger to get attracted to your toddler, your child’s identity could also be a ticket to fraud for someone else. Many identity fraudsters are waiting in ambush to grab a new form, and the fresh, spotless identity of a child is appealing enough. Child identity fraud is becoming an alarmingly large menace due to the various advantages. Children can be attractive targets for identity theft because they typically do not have any credit history and hence no credit reports. If an identity thief steals your child’s identity, you may not discover the crime for years until maybe your child tries to opt for a credit card, or takes other action that causes someone to run a credit check. Here are some steps you can take to help protect their information.
Keep a tab on your child’s credit reports:
The first step will be to check if whether your child has a credit report. You can download the first FREE Credit Report from a credit bureau such as CRIF. If at all there is a credit score between 300 to 900, then this should raise a red flag as ideally there should be no score at all. A score indicates that your child has already started creating a credit history. In this case, you may need to provide documents to credit bureaus to verify your child’s identity and your own.Be proactive in protecting your child’s identity:
There are various ways in which your child’s personal details can be leaked. Schools, tuitions, summer camps, dance classes and so many other avenues often request your child’s identity. While you cannot outright deny them all the details, try limiting or at least negotiating critical information like Aadhar card number wherever possible.Educate your children about online behaviour:
In today’s age of the internet, data sharing has become a basic behaviour. You need to enter your personal details in order to have access to the social media platform or any other services. One wrong move and your child’s personal data can be all over the internet. But that does not mean you abstain your child from the internet altogether – rather you can educate them on how to identify a legitimate website from a fraud one and what details are confidential enough to not share. This takes a bit of work and some trial & error to secure your child’s position.It is also the responsibility of banks, lenders, insurance agencies and other organisations to run a strong identity verification check and apply multiple security layers before they lend out money or allow an application fraud to happen. In the end, we can only as much try to prevent theft from happening but not eliminate the possibility completely. By taking an extra effort today to help keep your children’s identity safe and secure, you are securing your child’s tomorrow!
