Although I didn’t try to freeze my kids’ credit, I know that you can only freeze for 7 years if you have a police report for an identity theft. Else, they’ll only freeze it for a few months or a couple of years (don’t remember which). Then, you’d have to pay them (each credit bureau have a different price) to continue to have them frozen. In another word, it’s not easy to get it frozen and it’s even harder and more expensive to keep it frozen. This is one of the few areas where I wish the government would take a more active role. It’s extremely horrible to have your identity stolen and it’s extremely stressful and hard to get it go away.

[quote=SK in CV]What is the motivation for this? So that your kids can’t get credit cards that you don’t know about? Minors can’t enter into legally binding contracts. I’m sure it happens all the time, but the lender will always be at high risk when they do. What is the problem that you’re trying to avoid with the freeze?[/quote]

SK, it is commonplace among areas along the US int’l border to have one’s SSN stolen, either for immigration purposes and/or to take out credit because they either don’t have a credit record at all (most likely) or their credit record is shot. I had a kid who got their wallet stolen when they were about 18 in Chula Vista. In it were a Driver License and Military Dependent ID (which had a SSN on it), plus a bank ATM card (which needed a PIN to work, so was easily canceled). They went and got a replacement “Provisional” DL and managed to get a replacement Mil ID on a SD visit but when they went to get their “Adult” DL at the age of 21 (in a SF DMV), they discovered it had been recently issued to someone at another address out of the Chula Vista DMV. Of course, the DMV’s SOUNDEX photo revealed that the in-person applicant was NOT the same person as my kid. Since a minor or provisional license holder can’t “renew” by mail, someone had apparently beat them to the punch and came to the DMV in person and was issued a DL in my kid’s name.

Someone likely was able to use my kid’s MIL ID (until it expired (to buy gas and shop on base), assuming they could have used it to get a one-day temp sticker on their car. A couple of small credit accts using my kid’s SSN were also taken out. The scary part is that my kid’s Mil ID could have used it to access medical care through Tricare Standard. But it couldn’t have been renewed without the physical presence of the sponsor and it only had less than a year remaining on it before it expired.

The person using my kid’s SSN for credit purposes and the person using my kid’s identity on a CA DL were NOT one and the same person.

This whole thing caused my kid a lot of grief for a couple of years while they were in college. Fortunately, they had been issued a passport when they were a baby. So if someone tried to use it to obtain a US passport, they would have had to have known the number of the expired passport and the answers to a whole host of other questions to apply to “renew” an expired passport they didn’t know was on file. I have no doubt a person trying to do this was stopped dead in their tracks.

SK, SSN’s of minors and decedents (as well as other compromised identifying info) have always been heavily used in Los Angeles to peddle “fake” CA DL’s, passports and social security cards on the black market.

[quote=SK in CV]Thanks BG, that all makes sense. But how does putting a credit freeze on a minors SS number help any of this, other than eliminating stolen identity for a debt that would be unenforcable anyway? I’m not dismissing that as a valid reason to do it. That by itself would be a huge hassle. Is that something that is commonly done for adults? The credit freeze? I monitor my reports, to make sure there aren’t any new accounts that i didn’t apply for, but I don’t have a freeze on.[/quote]

When a person is trying to use a minor’s stolen SSN to obtain credit and the lender can’t get into the report because it is frozen, they will ask the imposter to “unfreeze” the account before credit is considered. Since the vast majority of credit reports are “frozen” due to one or more “fraud alerts” (because the acct-holder’s identity had been compromised in some way), the repository is not going to “unfreeze” it without the password of the actual acct holder. If the imposter doesn’t have that, they will have to go thru snail mail to unfreeze it (and may possibly have to be notarized). All I can say is they better be using the actual acct-holder’s address if they are going to attempt this.

In the short run, credit will not be granted in the minor’s name.

Unfortunately, if a lender runs a SSN, the only info they are likely to get is that that particular SSN was issued in a particular state. They will NOT know HOW LONG AGO the SSN was issued so will NOT realize that the SSN actually belongs to a minor.

For some states (incl CA), I know in my head which states certain SSN prefixes originate from and approx how long ago they were issued. But this knowledge comes from a l-o-o-o-ng practical experience working with SSNs on almost a daily basis. A lender, finance or CC company would really have no way of knowing this. Thus, I’m sure credit is (erroneously) extended to individuals using a minor’s SSN. In any case, this individual using the fraudulent identity to open credit has no intention of paying it back, anyway, whether or not the “loan terms” are enforceable.

The SSN prefix info is now posted online (was not when I worked with them).

http://socialsecuritynumerology.com/prefixes.php

http://www.mrfa.org/ssn.htm

http://www.einvestigator.com/links/social_security_numbers.htm

Of course, the older numbers are the lower-numbered prefix for each state. You will NOT be able to find out, however, the EXACT YEAR a particular SSN was issued unless you have a BR check run by a licensed private investigator.

There has been a large increase in minor identify theft…

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-10/news/31320466_1_identity-theft-resource-center-identity-thieves-victim-adviser

Your kid turns 18, goes to apply for a credit card in college for the first time or a car loan and he can’t do crap and has a mess to clean up already. Talk about wasting months or your life and tons of time and money.