Protect your child identity

Identity theft and credit card fraud is one of the most popular topic of every high shopping season. Every week you can read or watch another scheme busted by authorities and thousand and often millions of dollars of fraudulent charges. Here is one of the more recent stories.
League City, Texas resident, 36 years old Sharif John Reid pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of aggravated identity theft and access device fraud. The suspect has been on supervised release since April 2010 for another identity theft conviction from 2007 for the amount of $1 million.
Reid was arrested at Apple store when trying to make a purchase using fraudulent credit card and fake Florida driver's license. He had 38 stolen credit and gift cards on him upon arrest. Police suspects 2 sources of stolen identity: 1. card skimmer in an undisclosed business place in Austin, TX (skimmer is a small device to read magnetic strip information from credit, debit and gift cards, thieves attach it to a legitimate card swiper so that the information is read at the same swipe as the purchase), 2. identity merchants, web based stores selling credit card numbers along with credit limit and holder's information. Then the suspect was producing gift cards at home using plastic card printer with an embossing device which gave the cards legitimate look. Reid will be sentenced on April 23, he faces up to 22 years in in prison if convicted.

The ID Analytics study shows that over 140,000 minors each year become victims of identity theft. Most parents are unaware of children identity theft possibility and therefore they hardly ever check their kids credit score. This way a fraud can go undetected for extended period of time. Unfortunately many people discover they're victims of identity theft when they apply for a credit card for the first time. Sadly sometimes child identity is abused by immediate relatives such as parents or siblings who look for a clean start after ruining their own credit. The kids can also act naive and give out secure information without suspicion.

if your child is a resident of Utah you are lucky. The state is a national leader in active children identity protection.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff started new identity protection for children on January 31st. Together with Trans Union credit bueurau the new initiative will actively monitor minors credit profile and alert on any suspicious activity. The way it works is simple. Parent or legal guardian registers the child securely online with the service using name, address and Social Security number. From that point until the child reaches the age of 17 years Trans Union would alert creditors about potential fraud risk whenever credit profile information is requested by any creditor. Registration would also result in purge of any fraudulent information already present under child name within Trans Union database. Child Identity Protection (CIP) program is a result of a couple of years effort of Attorney General office and State Representative Eric Hutchings trying to figure an active prevention service against children identity theft. Reactive service, Identity Theft Reporting Information System (IRIS) was in place since 2006 and allowed to report identity theft. It was a huge success and collected over 3000 entries since it was launched. CIP is a next step from IRIS in protecting identity agains fraud. "This is a groundbreaking public/private partnership dedicated to specifically protecting children from having their good names and future credit ruined by identity thieves," said Attorney General during the new service inauguration meeting.
Service is available at www.idtheft.utah.gov

If you're not a resident of Utah there are still means of protecting your child identity:
1. set up a free credit score monitoring for your child at creditkarma.com, it's linked to TransUnion
2. watch out for adult like mail addressed to your child
3. make sure your kid understands what identity theft is and how to protect personal information
4. Remain alert on identity protection news, here is one place to check newsroom.quickidcard.com