Child ID Theft Protection: A Practical Gift

As a parent, grandparent, or guardian of a child, you want to do everything possible to help the child in your life have a bright future. This means preparing your child for everything that life could throw at him or her. In today’s world, this includes preparing your child for financial setbacks and doing everything possible to help your child have a bright financial future and financial success. You don’t want anything to derail this, especially before your child has a chance to begin making money decisions. As such, you need to take steps to fight against child ID theft.

Fighting Child ID Theft

Child ID theft has become a major source of concern. Many identity thieves are turning to children because they make easy victims. Kids may not be very careful with their personal information because they don’t understand the risk of identity theft. Even cautious parents who are diligent about keeping their own personal information private may not be aware that child ID theft is also an issue and, thus, may not be as careful with their children’s private data as they should. The worst issue, however, is that kids don’t use credit regularly, don’t apply for mortgages and car loans, and may not even be aware that they have credit reports. As such, an identity thief may have a long time in which he goes undetected and is free to steal and use a child’s personal information before he is discovered and stopped.

With child ID theft protection, however, you and your child are given important tools that will assist you in fighting any identity theft before it becomes a major problem to solve. With IDENTITY GUARD® identity theft protection, it is possible to regularly monitor a child’s credit information and to receive alerts triggered by certain suspicious or out-of-the-ordinary events. You can also take advantage of programs that are specifically targeted towards helping to prevent child ID theft, such as kID SureSM, if you would prefer a program specifically targeted towards helping to fight child ID theft.

Why Opt for Child Identity Theft Protection

A child’s credit score is going to have a major impact on that child’s life. Many students need loans in order to pay for college, so they will need to have their credit in good shape in order to get these important student loans. You don’t want to later discover – when that freshman year arrives – that there is a delay or that the loans aren’t available as a result of an identity theft situation. Further, you don’t want your child to start his or her life dealing with black marks on a credit record because of identity theft.

Correcting mistakes and errors on a credit report that exist because of identity theft takes time, and the longer the identity theft goes on undiscovered, the stickier and more complicated the situation becomes. Don’t let your child be saddled with a financial mess as one of his first experiences in the financial world. Instead, take advantage of child id theft protection through http://www.identityguard.com or kID SureSM in order to give your child a practical and lasting gift.

Credit monitoring is an important service for anyone who cares about his or her finances and who wants to have a handle on whether he is creditworthy enough to get favorable loan rates. However, if you have recently paid off debt or are in the process of paying off debt, credit monitoring becomes especially important.

How Does Credit Monitoring Help in Debt Payoffs

If you are paying off credit card, personal loan, or other consumer debt, using a credit monitoring service is a smart choice. Credit monitoring services through IDENTITY GUARD® silver, gold, or platinum will all provide you with relevant and timely information about your credit situation, while targeted programs through CreditProtectX3® or CreditProtect® will all help you to keep up to date about what is going on with your credit information.

Using one of these services can be very helpful when paying off debt for many reasons including the following:

• You can track the impact that your debt payoff is having on your credit score. 30 percent of your credit score is determined based on the amount of available credit you are actually using. This is called your “credit utilization” rate. The less of your credit you use, the higher your credit score will go since using less shows that you have a good handle on your debt and that you aren’t in debt trouble. Essentially, this means that as you pay off debt and you lower your utilization, you can see your score going up. That’s an exciting feeling.
  
  
• You can see on a regular basis that your payments are being applied and your debt totals are going down. A credit report gives you all of your credit information in one convenient place. This means you can get an overall idea of your debt picture. As you reduce the debt owed, you’ll see on your credit report that your remaining balances grow smaller and smaller. This will help to keep you motivated and keep you on track as you work to repay the debts that you owe.
  
  
• You can make sure your hard work isn’t undermined. When you are paying off debt it can sometimes be a struggle, but it is worth it to try to get and stay debt-free or to get rid of toxic debt at high interest rates. However, you don’t want to end up having all your hard work impacted by someone stealing your identity and getting credit in your name that doesn’t get paid. Although you can remove accounts from your credit report that were put there as a result of identity theft, this can take a long time and you need to actually take action to have the accounts removed (which means you need to know the accounts are there). Credit monitoring through IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect® helps you to know when something is amiss sooner than you otherwise would, so you can take the right action.
  
  

For all of these reasons, it just makes sense to use a credit monitoring service during your journey to repay your debts.

Checking your credit report regularly is a very wise choice. In fact, many people choose to sign up for a service such as IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect® so they will have the tools that allow them to keep up to date about the information on their credit and debt. By keeping tabs on what is going on, you not only have the best chance of fighting identity theft, but you also have the ability to see how your behaviors and actions with debt and spending affect your creditworthiness. These aren’t the only benefits of checking your credit report regularly either; there are many, all of which relate to ensuring good financial fitness.

However, in order to enjoy and make the most of all of the benefits of monitoring your credit report, you will need to understand your credit report. Here are a few times to help.

Understanding the Information on Your Credit Report

The information on your credit report is compiled by various agencies that assemble details on your debt and then use that information to give you a score on how creditworthy you are. Banks and lenders use the score and the information on your credit report in order to determine if you are a good lending risk or a bad one. If there is too much negative information or your score is too low, they won’t lend to you at all. If you have some negatives, you may have a low score but will still be creditworthy enough for banks to lend to. In this case, you’ll just pay a higher interest rate than someone with a good credit score.

The information on your credit report, therefore, consists of all of the details needed to determine what credit score to assign to you. The credit report also consists of details that banks and lenders might be interested in when assessing whether lending to you is a risk. This information includes the following:

• The names of all open accounts, the balances due, the length of time you have had the card, the minimum monthly payments, and your payment history (i.e. whether you’ve ever been 30, 60, or 90 days late or whether a creditor has ever had to discharged or “charge off” debt since you didn’t pay it back).
  
  
• Information about public records or judgments against you.
  
  
• Information regarding the number of new “inquiries” on your credit report. An inquiry is a request by a creditor to see your report because you’ve applied for new credit. “Soft” inquiries (those you initiate yourself when you want to check your credit and those that are done by companies for marketing or identity verification purposes) do not show up on your report, only queries that creditors conduct when you request new credit are listed. As such, this category shows lenders how much new debt you are taking on.
  
  

It is important to regularly monitor all of this information on your credit report by using a service such as IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect®. With these services, you get regular access to the details on your credit report so you can check for mistakes in your information, see if you have a good mix of debt, track your balances and inquiries, and otherwise make smart choices to protect a vital asset: your credit score.

identity protection is not something that should be a concern only for small portions of the population who are careless with their credit information. Everyone should be concerned with securing their personal information so they do not fall victim to identity theft. In an information-centric economy with new digital devices being developed every day, it has become even more important than ever for every single person to make smart choices and take responsibility for protecting themselves.

Identity Protection Steps

In order to ensure that you’ve done everything possible to secure your identity, be sure you have taken these identity protection steps:

1. Shred mail and documents with personal identifying information. Whether you have old tax returns, statements from your insurance or mortgage company, credit card solicitations, or anything else with your personal details on it, shredding it is the only smart choice. Anyone can get ahold of mail or papers that are thrown away and can use that information to steal your identity.
   
   
2. Be cautious about sharing your personal details, especially your Social Security Number. There are a whole host of tactics used by identity thieves to try to get ahold of information they should not have. Always be wary, and don’t fall victim to the traps set by skilled criminals. If someone calls claiming to be from your bank and trying to “verify” your information, tell them you’ll hang up and call them back (and then use the number you know for your bank). Don’t click on links in e-mails that lead you to sites where your personal info is entered (again, go directly to the site you know), and be cautious that not everything is always as it seems.
   
   
3. Watch your data on public networks and unsecured connections. If you have an open WiFi connection in your home or if you are on a public computer or Internet in a public place like a coffee shop, be very careful about entering any personal account details or information. Unsecured networks are, by definition, not secure. Someone with a little know-how could easily access your data.
   
   
4. Use passwords that are difficult to guess. If you use your name, your kids’ names, or your birthday as your password or your PIN, it can be easy for people to breach the “security” that a password is supposed to provide. After all, it isn’t very hard to find out someone’s birthday, especially in the age of Facebook and social networking.
   
   
5. Take advantage of identity protection services. With a service such as IDENTITY GUARD®, you can keep regular tabs on what is going on with your credit report and your personal information. You can even receive updates if certain triggering suspicious events occur. Services like IDENTITY GUARD® arm you with tools that may help you to fight identity theft more effectively.
   

If you follow these steps, you can significantly increase the chances that your personal information will remain as it should –personal. Don’t wait for identity theft to happen; take the proper steps for identity protection today by securing your information and getting in touch with IDENTITY GUARD® to start your service.

You’ve probably heard that checking your credit report makes good financial sense and that it is a smart move to keep tabs on your credit report by using monitoring services such as IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect®. While you may know that you’re supposed to check your credit report, however, you may not be sure what exactly you should look for.

What to Check On Your Credit Report

When you have your credit report in front of you, there are a few key things to look for:

• Do you have any late payments or judgments against you or other negative information? If you do, this can significantly lower your score. If the late payments or negatives are legitimate, then you’ll usually just have to try to improve your borrowing behavior going forward while waiting for the negatives to drop off so your score can improve. If the information is incorrect, you’ll need to contact the credit bureaus and, perhaps, try to get in touch with your creditor to see why misinformation is being reported.

• Are there accounts you do not recognize or mistakes on your report? If there are accounts that do not belong to you this can be a sign of identity theft, and you need to take action right away to find out where and when those accounts were opened. If there are simple mistakes, contact the credit bureau and your creditor to have the mistakes corrected.
  

By checking your credit report regularly using IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect®, you can keep tabs on what information is being reported, and you can work to catch mistakes or problems as soon as they happen so your credit isn’t damaged through no fault of your own.

To learn more about your credit report, credit scores, credit score monitoring, or what determines a good credit score, visit Credit Report and Score Basics.

Identity protection from services such as IDENTITY GUARD® works by helping you to stay informed regarding the use of your personal information. When people steal your identity, they may do any number of different things with it. Usually, however, they open some type of credit card or borrow money in some way – using your name – and then do not pay back those debts.

Identity protection helps you to see when your information is being used. With various packages from IDENTITY GUARD®, you’ll be given the opportunity to monitor your credit report. Your credit report is a repository of information about your credit accounts, public records information, and borrowing behavior. With IDENTITY GUARD®, you can see if something odd shows up on your credit report – for instance, a credit card that you did not open. You can then look into why that credit card was opened, who opened it, and from where it came. This can help you to catch an identity thief as soon as he takes any type of action.

Services such as IDENTITY GUARD® do more than just let you look at your credit report, though. Certain types of suspicious activity or behavior will trigger the alert to be sent to you. This means that even when you aren’t actively watching or monitoring, IDENTITY GUARD® is watching out for you.

Keeping track of your personal details has become more challenging than ever in an Internet age when so much information is shared digitally around the world. Services like IDENTITY GUARD® that offer ID protection and fraud protection can help you to stay safe. Learn more about IDENTITY GUARD® and identity theft prevention today if you are serious about keeping your good name safe.

If you are a parent, the last thing you may be concerned about is the theft of your child’s ID information since it may never occur to you that anyone is out to steal your child’s identity.
Unfortunately, however, it has become increasingly common for criminals to target children and to take their Social Security numbers or other personal details. These identity thieves, who take child ID information, may then use the child’s details to apply for credit, take out a loan, or otherwise do things they shouldn’t. This can leave the child with a damaged or destroyed credit score before he or she is even old enough to get credit.

Three Reasons to Protect Your Child’s Identity

There are literally countless reasons why parents may wish to protect the private identities of their children by making use of a service such as IDENTITY GUARD® to help them to keep their kid’s precious identity safe. However, three of the best and most important reasons for using a service like IDENTITY GUARD® are listed below.

1. Child identity theft often doesn’t come to light until a child identity thief has done significant damage. Kids normally do not check their credit regularly and do not apply for credit. This means that it could be weeks, months, or years before you realize that your child’s identity has been stolen. During this time, the identity thief could charge thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of items. The child’s credit could be completely destroyed by dozens of loans and judgments against him or her. While the misinformation caused by identity theft usually can be corrected, it can be very time consuming to do this. In the meantime, your child may experience adverse effects such as having a hard time getting student loans because of bad credit. During the time it takes to sort things out, your child could lose out on important opportunities.
2. Identity theft is about more than just stealing money. Thieves could do other things with your child’s name than just apply for loans. For example, someone could get medical care in your child’s name. If the medical care shows up on your child’s medical records, this could put your child in danger due to inaccurate information on his or her medical history.
3. Child identity theft can be difficult to fix. With any type of identity theft, it can be very time consuming and can take dozens of hours to resolve the issue. Your child won’t be able to do everything necessary to resolve the problems created by child ID theft, so the responsibility will likely fall to you. 

These are just three reasons why it is important to be proactive in stopping child ID theft. With IDENTITY GUARD® or with targeted programs to help fight child ID theft such as kID SureSM, you can take steps to do everything possible to prevent your child from having his or her identity stolen. This is just one more way that you, as a parent, can protect the interests of your kids and work to keep them safe from harm.