Baby's Identity Safety: Smart Way to Protect Her Credit

"When I finally got through to a real human being, I gave her my oldest daughter's Social Security number (SSN) and then there was silence on the other end of the line," recalls Blackwood. "She asked me to repeat the numbers. Then she said, 'Uh-oh.'"

Bad news: Someone had applied for and received credit using his oldest daughter's SSN. And the news got worse. His younger daughter had been an identity theft victim, too. Over the next few months, Blackwood estimates that he spent over 600 hours fixing his daughters' credit histories.

Johnny May, a security consultant and the author of Johnny May's Guide to Preventing Identity Theft, explains how easy it is for a criminal to use your child's identity.

• First, the criminal obtains your child's SSN from an illegal source. (May describes a Social Security number as "the keys to the kingdom.")
• Next, a criminal goes into the local big-box retailer and applies for credit using your child's number. "Sure, it might be a small amount, but it helps him establish a credit history," says May.
• Then the criminal pays the minimum balance each month. Once he has one credit card, it's easy to get more and more. He can rack up charges for years.

May explains that there's no system in place at the credit reporting agencies to check a SSN against a person's identity. At the credit bureaus, a SSN is only checked for credit history. "The first time the credit bureau starts tracking reports is when someone first applies for credit using the Social Security number." Meaning, no one ever checks if the Social Security number belongs to a 42-year-old man or a two-year-old who can't even say "credit card."

With criminal ID theft, someone might offer your child's name and information instead of his own when involved with a crime.

Cloning happens when a criminal takes over the victim's identity: He's not only using the SSN to establish credit, but also to secure rent and employment applications. Todd Davis, founder and CEO of LifeLock, an ID theft protection agency, says that employers check SSN that potential workers submit to make sure that they're valid—not to insure that they belong to that person. In other words, there's no system in place to verify that the SSN someone gives a landlord or an employer is actually his or her own.

Foley, at the Identity Theft Resource Center, adds that there are a variety of ways for criminals to snag someone's identity, from sophisticated Internet scams and hacking into personal computers to good old-fashioned stealing. For instance, some criminals target the mailboxes of people who have "It's a Boy!" signs on their lawns, knowing that a Social Security card will be in the mail soon. Some find the children's Social Security cards in the parents' wallets. And Foley even knew of one case where a criminal made up a SSN, somehow used it to obtain credit, and then a newborn was issued the number later.

Protecting Your Child's Social Security Number
Safeguarding your child's SSN is a matter of being proactive. For instance, insurance companies often use the number to identify your child for their files and for billing. Call your insurance and ask to have another number issued as an identifier for your child. (Some insurance companies are already doing this.)