The Lowdown on Freezing Your Kid’s Credit
Summary: A Krebs on Security primer explains that as of January 2016 there is no federal law letting parents freeze a minor's credit file, so the ability depends on state law, with 23 states offering some protective mechanism according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. A 2012 Carnegie Mellon CyLab study of scans on some 40,000 children found roughly 10 percent were victims of identity theft, and the proposed Protect Children from Identity Theft Act had a two percent chance of passage in that Congress per GovTrack.
Bottom line: Roughly one in ten children in a 40,000-child scan already had their identity misused, and most parents do not find out until the child nears 18 - years in which a thief can open accounts against a clean Social Security number.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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