SCAMS BULLETIN Host Jay White is a volunteer attorney who provides free legal services to low income seniors in San Mateo County, California.

September 30, 2019.

Credit Freeze to Protect Kids Online

It’s bad enough that many of us struggle to protect ourselves adequately on the web, but even worse is the thought that our kids online are even more vulnerable – and often they don’t realize it.

Recognizing this, over the years, several organizations have acted to alert youngsters and parents to the risks and to introduce new rules and regulations to protect them.

Most recently, a new federal law in the US adds to the protection from fraud and identity theft for young people. It lets parents and guardians implement a security freeze on the records of under-16s held by credit reporting agencies.

That’s because identity thieves commonly try to use the names of youngsters to take out loans and other credit agreements.

As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) notes:

“Minors typically don’t have credit reports, which means that a young person may not find out about issues with their credit reports until they first try to get credit – perhaps even years later.”

The free, freezing process restricts banks and other financial agencies from accessing an individual’s credit record. If the bank or agency can’t check the record, they more than likely will not provide finance to the applicant.

You don’t need to believe your child’s ID has been stolen or their account otherwise compromised to take this action. You can just place a freeze to protect against any such acts in the future.

And if a child doesn’t already have a credit record, the three reporting agencies will create one, so it can be frozen, preventing anyone else from trying to open an account in your child’s name.

“Depending on the adult’s relationship to the child, there are different procedures to put a freeze in place,” the FTC explains. “Parents need to show proof of their authority, like a birth certificate, to freeze or unfreeze the credit file for their child under 16.”

There are different rules for welfare or probation agencies.

In all cases, you need to contact each of the credit reporting agencies to put the freeze in place.

This new rule isn’t the only one to protect kids online. The main law is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).