Javelin study shows at least one child ID theft victim in every school classroom
Last week Florida’s attorney general Bill McCollum alerted parents to the widespread theft of children’s identities. He cited an estimate that 500,000 children a year fall victim to identity theft, but added that he suspected there were far more victims of child identity theft.
A recent study by Javelin Strategy and Research proves him right.
Incredibly, their study shows 5% of children have at least one credit report linked to their Social Security number, indicating that someone has applied for credit using their information. That’s at least one child in every school classroom.
- Of those 5%, there is an average of $12,779 in wrongly assigned or fraudulent debt. One child had over $325,000 in debt.
- One child’s Social Security number had been used to establish seven different identities. Debts included medical bills, apartment leases and several accounts that had been placed with collection agencies.
- 25% of the child identity theft victims had debts in collection or foreclosures recorded in their credit histories.
- 12% of the child identity theft victims were age 5 or younger, but most child identity theft victims don’t discover the crime until years later when they begin applying for jobs or student loans and are denied because of poor credit histories.
Another Javelin study conducted in 2007 showed that of the millions of records exposed in data breaches last year, 1.17 million families have children whose Social Security number and/or birth date were exposed. Coupled with the child’s name, that is usually enough information to steal an identity.
LifeLock was the first identity theft protection service to offer their extensive services to children. Visit their website today to see what they can do to protect your entire family from identity theft. Enroll in the identity theft protection service used by almost 1.5 million other Americans and use the LifeLock promotion code RD17 for the very best prices and 30 days of free service for you and your children.
