[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.
