How Secure Is Your Child’s Social Security Number?

E-Crime Expert brings you today an interesting Information Security web show on how Children are the most vulnerable for identity and financial information theft.

Concise Courses organized a web show titled: “How Secure Is Your Child’s Social Security Number?” with three expert speakers on the subject: Michelle Dennedy, Bo Holland and Andrew Serwin. Michelle serves as Chief Privacy Officer at McAfee and founded the iDennedy Project. Bo founded AllClear ID, and Andrew has handled child security matters before the Federal Trade Commission in information security and COPPA.

You can watch the recorded Information Security web show video including a short presentation of the special guests here.

Michelle mentioned that historically child identity theft was never considered to be a problem, however, statistics today show that 11% of kids have their Social Security Number stolen and used to obtain illegal credit. Think about that! In a classroom of 11, one child will have their identity being used to secure mortgages, purchase cars etc. When asked about victim impact for the child and parents, Michelle mentioned that of course it can be very traumatic – not least because, for example, access to education funds can be withheld and the cost to “clean” the credit can be very expensive.

One of the many excellent points that Bo mentioned was that victims keep getting younger because the likelihood of parents checking their child’s credit is minimal, especially if their children are under the age of ten.

Andrew spoke on various equally interesting topics and identified social media as particularly problematic since children can very easily volunteer personal information such as birth date, address and other details that can be used for fraudulent activity.

If you have question please contact us at: dan@e-crimeexpert.com