Andy: This is The Secure Family Podcast.
Welcome friend, I'm Andy Murphy, the host and founder of The Secure Dad.
This show is all about empowering parents to protect themselves and their family.
I believe that security is the foundation of happiness, and I want
your family to be safe and happy.
The information I share on this podcast is for general information purposes only.
My goal is to empower you to make safer decisions for yourself and your family.
Because our safety is our own responsibility.
Today, I'm going to share with you a story from my life and a lesson that
I learned that I hope will help you keep your children safe from fraud.
All of that and more coming up on The Secure Family Podcast.
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You know, as parents, we are understandably concerned about the
safety and wellbeing of our children.
We make sure that when our kids are young, there aren't any
choking hazards in their way.
Then when they're older, we teach them how to drive safely and we want them
to make good decisions while they're gaming online, becoming digital citizens.
Those are all safety concerns that are in our daily lives.
We can see those things and affect them for our kids, an unseen
danger that parents often overlook, including me, is child identity theft.
If you've never thought about this before, I certainly don't blame you.
So in 2023, I learned that it was a good idea to think about my son's financial
future, not just from the point of view of having a good savings account or anything
like that, but to protect his good name.
So in 2023, I froze my son's credit with the three major credit bureaus.
I did what I thought at the time was an extra step to further protect him.
Like my goodness, after all I founded The Secured Dad, you know,
this should be something that I do.
I had to gather, like, a whole bunch of information and paperwork and mail
it in to each of the credit bureau.
And, by the way, they don't all use the same forms, they don't
want all the same identification.
It's a process, but I did it.
And it worked.
What I didn't know was that I would actually be very thankful for
doing this less than a year later.
In April of 2024, I got a letter from our bank saying that my son's personal
information had been compromised, in what they called a small data breach.
He has a youth savings account, and the bank had his information, like his name
and address and social security number.
And those things were exposed in this breach.
At the time, he was 11.
At 11, my son was involved in what I believe to be his first data breach.
And that's the world that we live in today.
This is something that we have to take seriously.
I consider child identity theft to be an unseen danger, and I say this
because mostly the attack comes from somebody online who takes that data,
who isn't anywhere near your child and most likely never knows you.
They don't know what you look like.
They don't really know where you live.
You're just a bunch of ones and zeros in a file.
So as a parent, how are we supposed to know that this is a thing?
So let me make this clear.
If your child has a social security number, they are
at risk of identity theft.
That means this potential threat starts with all of the paperwork that you fill
out at the hospital that's associated with your child's birth certificate.
Most parents don't ever think about this and it could ruin your child's
financial future and you may not even know about it for 17 or 18 years.
I don't want you to find out that there's a problem with your child's credit score
when they go to apply for a car loan or apply for financial aid at college.
But that's when a lot of people get hit with some really bad news.
You see, our children are a blank slate in a number of ways.
Because there isn't a lot of legal information about a young child
in any record, that means that the bad guys have a lot of leeway in
creating their own fake identity with your child's real information.
With your child's ID, a thief can open new lines of credit in your child's
name, they could buy things with a credit card, collect unemployment,
and even open fake bank accounts.
In some cases, thieves have been able to get medical procedures.
I don't know how that works, but it happens.
Also, personally identifiable information can be sold on the dark web.
So if the thief takes it, that thief may never use it.
It may take a few months or a year to sell that off.
Then it could be sold more than once and cause trouble at different
times in your child's life.
Once that information is compromised, It's out there and that's, that's hard.
That's tough.
Now at this point you might wonder if the credit reporting
companies catch this type of fraud.
Unfortunately, that is not as cut and dry as you think.
And that is an ongoing theme in all of this.
The way it works is that the social security number is validated
separately from the other personally identifiable information in the process.
I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but looking at it through this lens,
I don't feel that that's a good thing.
I'm just a dad.
A scammer could use the identity of a 40 year old man with the social
security number of a 12 year old girl.
This may seem counterintuitive to you and me, but it is the current
process that we all have to live with.
And I don't think it's going to change anytime soon, even after the
big National Public Data Breach.
I don't think we're going to see any changes.
So let's switch gears now and talk about what we can do to
protect our children's identities.
If any of these things that I'm about to tell you sound intimidating, don't worry.
I have created a free guide that will go over all of this.
I will share each step that I took in freezing my son's credit
so that you can do the same.
And there's a link for you in the show notes to download this guide.
One of the biggest leaks of a child's personal information.
Is us.
It's the parents.
Yeah, we're supposed to be the protectors, but sometimes we make mistakes.
We may inadvertently give away very valuable information about our
children in person or even online.
Have you ever seen those cute birth announcement pictures on social media?
There's gonna be like a small child that looks like a squishy potato
next to a letter board that says Ava Charlotte Riddle, born August
1st, 2023, Sugar Land, Texas.
In that one picture an unsuspecting proud parent has
given away a lot of personal data.
Their child's legal name, gender, date of birth, and place of birth have been
shown to everybody on the internet.
That's a lot of information for a seasoned scammer to use.
That's really a goldmine.
And to make it worse, thieves can search for the parents names and addresses and
phone numbers, and even their relatives.
This gives them a robust amount of legitimate information.
And what is so bad is that at this point, nothing illegal has taken place yet.
An identity thief can simply see a social media post.
Then they can do a legal search on a site like whitepages.
com to find out the rest of the information.
It's only when they commit fraud that a crime has occurred.
As parents, we must consider what we post online and how it
may affect our child's future.
And yes, joining DeleteMe is a great way to protect your family's
data from searches like this.
Another way your child's identity can be stolen, is in a data breach.
Some breaches only divulge email addresses or passwords or things
like that, but there was an epic data breach in South Carolina that
compromised 6.4 million residents.
Including children.
Back in 2012, 3.
6 million social security numbers were exposed along with other information in
a breach that originated from a phishing attack at a state government office.
At the time, and I say this, at the time, it was the largest cyber attack
against a state agency in the nation.
In response, the state offered residents credit monitoring for two years.
Kind of as damage control.
The issue is that Social Security numbers don't change.
If criminals are patient enough to have waited until 2015, they could have had
a ton of information ready to go past that free credit monitoring period.
You might be thinking that this all seems impossible to protect your
child's valuable data, but there are steps that parents can take to
shield their children's information.
The first thing that we have to do is protect our children's personal
information and take that very seriously.
You've listened to this show, you are now on notice.
This is very important.
Don't share detailed birth announcements with valuable information.
Also, keeping your child's social security number secret is vital, while
government forms may require it, if you don't have to share it, then don't.
It's okay for you to ask a daycare, an online service, or whatever, why the
social security number is necessary.
Then ask if it's okay that you don't provide it on the
basis of protecting your child.
Just see what happens.
There's probably a lot of times they'll just waive that for you.
One of the best ways to protect your child from identity theft
is to freeze their credit.
You may think that since they're young that your child does not
have a credit score, so you don't really need to worry about it.
Freezing your child's credit essentially locks it until
your child is ready to use it.
This will keep identity thieves from hurting your child's credit history.
So, going back to 2023, my wife and I chose to freeze our son's credit.
And the process was complicated.
I had to pull together a lot of documents.
I had to physically mail it in to the three big credit companies,
which, by the way, uh, are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
Unfortunately, freezing a minor's credit is not as easy as it is for an adult.
Think back to the National Public Data breach not that long ago.
I was encouraging adults to call numbers and freeze their credit,
which could be done over the phone.
That is just not the case with children.
You have to prove that you are the guardian to each of the bureaus,
and that will take some legwork on your part to prove that.
Generally, you'll have to identify who you are, that you
are the guardian of the child.
You'll have to provide your government ID, their birth certificate,
and a few other documents.
Then there are a few forms that have to be filled out and then physically mailed in.
And of course, the processes are similar, but they are not the
same for all three companies.
Plus you'll have to do this process for each one of your children.
It can get overwhelming, but it is worth it.
I'm not going to go into all the details right now because it is an
exhaustive process, but I've created for you a free step by step guide on
how to freeze your child's credit.
This is based on what I did to successfully freeze my son's credit.
There are links to the information that you'll need and some tips that I
learned along the way, and I'm happy to share those with you for free.
And there's a link in the show notes for you.
When your child is ready for their credit to be unfrozen, you'll need
to contact all three companies again to initiate the process.
So when you complete the freeze, the company will mail you a
packet of information on how to open the account again.
Keep this information in a safe place, like a safe deposit box or
a fireproof safe, because you are going to need it in the future.
It does seem like a lot of work, but consider this.
Would you rather do some work now?
Or do a ton of work later when your child's credit is ruined.
It may take years to clear up the residual effects of identity thieves.
If you discover that your child's information has already been stolen,
you can report it, and then have those fraudulent accounts closed, and then
you can freeze your child's credit.
The FTC has a process that they use to help you.
But as you can see, one way or another, freezing your child's credit is going
to be a solution, either for prevention or as an emergency measure when
things have gone really, really wrong.
Parents need to do their part in keeping their child's social security number and
their personal data safe and private.
Be proactive and consider freezing your child's credit now so that they
can have a strong financial future.
Well, this concludes this episode of The Secure Family Podcast.
Thank you so much, friend, for being a part of the show.
Take back your privacy and personal data with help from DeleteMe.
Get 20 percent off a privacy plan when using the code DAD at checkout.
DeleteMe is the official data removal service of The Secure Dad.
Keep your kids safe while gaming online with my new ebook, Level Up.
It's available to you right now at the link in the show notes.
If you'd like to know more about The Secure Dad, visit thesecuredad.com.
There you'll find free downloads, books to buy, podcast
episodes, and a whole lot more.
I'm Andy Murphy, and I want you to consider freezing your child's credit.
Yes, it is tedious, but it is worth the effort.
Trust me.