Children are appealing targets for ID theft; parents can guard them

They even go after one of the most vulnerable groups: children."Children are not in any condition to protect themselves," said Adam Levin, chairman and co-founder of Identity Theft 911, which provides identity-theft products and helps victims of the crime. "It's up to their parents.

Children are especially enticing targets for identity-theft crooks because it can take years before the crime is discovered.

"Children, while it doesn't occur often, are probably the most vulnerable just because if someone steals my child's identity, they can use that for 10 to 15 years before they [the child] apply for a loan and they find that their credit is really not good," said Thomas Harkins, chief strategy officer for Secure Identity Systems in Nashville.

Statistics on child identity theft are hard to pin down.

"We don't ask for age in our identity-theft surveys," said Claudia Bourne Farrell, spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission. "Our self-reported, anecdotal data indicates that about 5 percent of the complaints last year were for people 18 and under."

The number of child identity thefts reported may be lower than the actual number because "many people find out after they're over the age of 18 that they were victims of identity theft when they were under 18," Mr. Levin said.

"The conventional wisdom is that it's about 500,000 people a year who are children who become victims of identity theft," he said.

The most common way child identity theft occurs is when the child's Social Security number is used to establish new lines of credit.

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