Think of all the steps you take to protect your children. You protect their health by adhering to a schedule for vaccinations. You monitor their Internet usage to protect them from predators. You use parental controls to keep them from watching excessively violent or sexual shows on TV.
You’d like to thing that schools are also doing all they can to protect your children from identity thieves. But the truth is your children’s personally identifying information is a cash cow for school districts and colleges, and many cash-strapped education institutions are taking advantage of it.
The same federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 that gave schools broad authority to decide what student information belongs in the public record and can be used in school publications such as student directories and yearbooks, also gives them authority to sell lists containing students’ names, ages, phone numbers, and email and home addresses.
A study by Javelin Strategy and Research found that 5% of children—that’s roughly one in every classroom–have files with credit reporting agencies, meaning somebody applied for credit using their information.
The golden key for identity thieves is a Social Security number, and, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, by using the information on the schools’ lists, it’s simple to determine someone’s Social Security number.
Children’s identifying information is especially valuable to ID thieves because their crimes usually go undetected until their victims are old enough to apply for credit itself.
We can optimistically hope that most buyers use the information for nothing more than marketing purposes, but once the schools let go of the information they no longer have any control of it and parents will probably never know how the information is used or by whom.
I didn’t believe this was widespread until my daughter’s school sent home a release form for me to sign! That’s terrible that if you agree to be in the yearbook they have the right to sell their informaiton!