As a society, we are gripped by the notion of a child being abducted by a stranger who cruises public spaces or drives around in a white van. But actually, children are far, far more likely to be abducted by people they know, especially in situations involving child custody disputes.
The same goes for identity theft. Children are far more likely to have their identity stolen by someone they know, even their own parents.
When Axton Betz-Hamilton went to sign the lease on her first apartment, a quick credit check showed she was thousands of dollars in the hole for unpaid credit card bills someone else had racked up in her name. It wasn’t until years later that Axton learned the identity thief who wrecked her credit when she was a child was her own mother.1
Did You Know? Nearly 75 percent of identity theft victims know the perpetrators.2
The Truth About Child Identity Theft
Axton’s story may seem unbelievable, but only if you don’t know anything about child identity theft, which ensnares nearly one in 50 children in the U.S. yearly, according to a 2021 Javelin Strategy & Research report.
In addition to potential threats coming from inside their own home, kids are logging in more screen time than ever before; giving away personal information and making unsupervised purchases. This activity seriously increases the chance of a predator stealing their personal data or payment information.
FYI: According to a recent study by the Lending Tree, 46 percent of our kids (18 and under) have used our credit cards to make online purchases averaging $500 or more.3
Three out of Four Child Identity Theft Victims Know the Thief
Young children aren’t savvy enough to know that certain information should be kept secret. For example, a 7-year-old might tell a friend the password to unlock their tablet, which happens to be the same password for making purchases on Roblox. If you throw a relative, family friend, or neighborhood child into the equation, where trust is implicit, you can see why people with loose morals are able to take advantage of unsuspecting children, and their parents.
The situation gets even thornier once our little ones venture out onto social media, which they’re doing in record numbers. According to the folks at Common Sense Media, the number of kids ages 8 and up on sites like Instagram and Snapchat is up 17 percent compared to before the pandemic.4 These social media platforms and kid-centric games like Roblox are magnets for grifters looking to con a naive child.
What you can do: It all starts with teaching your kids good digital hygiene. Make sure they know not to give away any passwords or personal information, including their exact birthday. You can back up these instructions with parental control software, like a LifeLock subscription. These applications let you know when your kids are online and what they’re doing.
Child Safety Tip:: The more you post online about your kids, the more information a would-be thief can collect about them. If you do share updates about your children online, or “sharenting,” never reveal any personal information that could be used to forge a false identity (birthdates, birthplaces, Social Security numbers, etc.).
Children are 51 times more vulnerable to identity theft than their parents
The 2021 Javelin report found that 1.25 million American children were victims of identity theft and fraud in 2020, costing the average family more than $1,100. Perhaps more frightening: half of all child identity theft cases involve children nine years old and younger.
Stealing the identity of someone that young seems a little counterintuitive at first, but it actually makes sense. We don’t check on our children’s credit because, well, there’s nothing to check. They’re just kids, right?
Actually, that’s precisely why thieves target them. Because we adults don’t check, thieves can get away with their crimes for years with devastating and costly consequences. Our research has turned up stories about unsuspecting teens having multiple lines of credit in their name, mortgages, auto loans, and even medical debt.
What you can do: Sign up for a top-rated identity theft protection plan with a track record for stopping thieves cold in their tracks. Many of the best providers also offer family ID protection services, which are especially geared toward helping parents cope with everything from cyberbullying to social media safety.
Did You Know? The Javelin study found 90 percent of the households with internet access have children on social media, where online predators try to con kids out of their personal information.
Kids who go online unsupervised earlier are more likely to become victims of identity theft
Most older teens are savvy enough to not fall for identity theft scams, but younger kids and unsupervised online socializing is the perfect storm for identity theft. And apparently this is not an uncommon combination in the U.S.
While youngsters using social media aren’t necessarily fraud risks, many families don’t restrict their usage in any way. This can result in a much higher risk for being conned or the victim of a data breach. Any app that includes private messaging poses a risk, but Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook are the three most common platforms for child identity theft, according to Javelin.
What you can do: Keep your kids off social media for as long as you can. When it’s time to let go of the reins, monitor their activity. Parental control software (see above) can really help here, especially if you start when they’re young. Most important of all, don’t wait to educate your kids on the pitfalls of social media. Kids are quick studies and they can learn to be more careful online.
FYI: One in five 2- to 5-year-olds knows their way around at least one smartphone app. Only one in 10 of them knows how to tie their own shoelaces.7
Schools are favorite targets of identity thieves.
Hackers hell-bent on child identity theft are increasingly targeting public schools. According to cyber security company Emsisoft, 45 school districts reported a cyberattack in 2022, and 108 districts reported they were attacked in 2023, an increase of more than 100 percent. Even worse, the impacts of these attacks can affect people long into adulthood.
How did we get to this point? Simple. One, most of our schools use vulnerable legacy networks riddled with backdoors. Two, hackers have become much more agile and unscrupulous. And, finally, many of us parents don’t think twice about handing over our kids’ sensitive data to schools.
Typically, our kids’ personally identifiable information, or PII, gets leaked onto the dark web, where it gets bundled and sold to identity thieves who use it to do all the bad things. Sadly, criminal activities have gotten even more extensive in recent years. It’s also gotten more expensive for families to fix the damage. In fact, the average household loses over $740 to ID fraud and spends an additional $400 on restoration, which results in a grand total of $1,140.
And those are the lucky ones.
What you can do: Don’t ever give your child’s Social Security number to their school (or doctor’s office or summer camp). They shouldn’t be using it as a form of ID or asking you to share it.
Did You Know? Good news for parents may be on the way. The government is developing a background check for creditors that will let them cross-check birthdate and SSN combinations so no “4-year-old” will ever be able to take out an auto loan again.
94 percent of families with a child ID theft victim didn’t have a family identity theft protection plan.
Nearly all the households victimized by identity thieves never considered ID theft protection. If that’s you, we understand. It’s an easy enough trap to fall into.
Your home is physical. There are walls, windows and doors — physical objects you can protect with an affordable home security system. Your identity, on the other hand, is mostly digital — numbers in faraway databases you don’t interact with everyday.
What you can’t see can’t hurt you, right? Wrong. That’s the mindset that lulls most parents into thinking their families don’t need any extra ID protection for their children.
But the numbers tell a very different story. Between 2001 and 2021, identity theft reports at the Federal Trade Commission climbed from a mere 86,250 to a mammoth 1,434,676!8 Thieves are stealing our identities, and the damage they wreak can easily dwarf a burglar’s average haul of $2,661.9
For child victims, the situation is particularly grim. Child ID theft tends to span years, and many times our kids don’t find out until they’re on the verge of adulthood and buying their first car, renting their first apartment, or taking out a student loan.
What you can do: Invest in a basic ID theft protection plan for your family. Aura ID theft protection is our top pick for families with children. (Identity Guard is also worth looking at if you want best-in-class protection for the little ones.) Once you set your service up, it works just like a home security system. All your sensitive data, including your credit cards, is under lock and key.
If your personal info ever gets compromised in a data breach, you’ll know. If a fraudster ends up with your PII and starts monkeying with your credit, you’ll get an alert in seconds and can shut the grift down.
Child Safety Tip:: If you want to reduce the chances of ID theft to nil for your kids, freeze their credit until they’re 16. To get started, visit the websites of each of the three main credit bureaus — Equifax, TransUnion and Experian — and follow their instructions.
Final Thoughts
According to Frank Abignale, the former scammer (and now FBI consultant) whose story Stephen Spielberg told in “Catch Me If You Can,” our birthdate and birthplace is 98 percent of the information a thief needs to steal our identities.10
So, yes, online scams have gotten a lot more insidious over the years, but many thieves still operate the old-fashioned way: with basic information people share with them by accident or that they snap up on the dark web from data breaches. The damage they can do with that little bit of info is often catastrophic, especially when it comes to our kids.
The good news is that there’s a very easy way to shut identity thieves down completely. Subscribe to a family ID protection plan. We’ve tested a lot of the plans that are out there and put together a handy guide on the best identity theft protection plans for families.
If you want to focus primarily on protecting your kids, you can review our guide on the best identity theft protection for children. These services typically offer ways to control your kids’ online activities, protecting them from both identity theft and online predators. As for things you can do on your own, here’s our guide to kids’ digital safety to get you started.
