Jack’s Cash

Now that may sound like a crazy idea, but my friend over at Financial Baby Steps just recently wrote an article about how identity theft is becoming more and more popular with kids and infants. The article referenced at Financial Baby Steps talks about a guy who somehow got a hold of a toddlers SSN and opened a couple of bank accounts and wrote over $19,000 in fraudulent checks.

First of all it definitely shows what a sham the current system is if a person can open bank accounts with a toddlers social security number. I would think that there would be some sort of verification/lookup done on the social security number before opening an account for someone, but I think a customer’s security is the last of a banks concerns. They just want new customers and the money that comes a long with it, they really have very little to lose if the customer turns out to be a fraud, because in the end all the liability falls on the customer, or in this case the person whom the customer was inpersonating. Don’t think banks really are this bad, check out this article (its a multipart website look for links to next page on the bottom).

Well anyway my dad was sort of curious as to what would actually show up on a credit report for a baby and this article actually gave him a good enough reason to run my report. Originally he was a little hesitant to request a report, becuase theoretically there would be absolutely nothing on it, but this will give him some piece of mind that no one has stolen my identity.

So here are the steps my dad took to get my credit report. As you may or may not know you can request a free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies (Transunion, Experian, Equifax) every 12 months by going to http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com . Once there you just need to select your state from the drop downlist and then on the next page fill out the information with your name, address, DOB, and SSN. If all works well you will be taken to the next page where you can choose which credit berueas you want to request a report from.

Unfortunately they will not let you request a credit report for a minor under the age of 13 years old through their website online. Instead you need to request a copy by mail. Here is their reasoning below, guess it makes sense, but honestly I feel much more comfortable being able to do everything online and hopefully just dealing with a webserver. If you read below to request it by mail I need to have my dad give them a copy of my birth certificate, my social security card, and my dad’s driver’s license. I personally hate sending sensative information via snail mail, because that means that I have to worry about (1) someone stealing or intercepting the mail (2) some minimum wage worker handeling all of these sensitive documents and processing or entering them in on their end (3) relying on this same random stranger at this company to properly shred/dispose of the documents are they are done with them so that the janitor or some dumpster diver can’t easily find all the information necessary to steal my identity (4) having to have even more sensitive information sent back over snail mail and possibly falling into the wrong hands. Now don’t ge me wrong, a lot can go wrong electronically over the web, but honestly in most cases I feel much more secure doing sensitive transactions online. Anyway here is the information below if you want to request information for your very own minor, for me though I am going to wait for now.

Due to security and privacy reasons, credit report requests of persons under 13 years of age must be requested by their parent or guardian and additional identification documentation must be provided which cannot be received through this website. Instructions for completing these requests can be accessed through this website by clicking mail request for a child under 13. If this date of birth was entered in error, please try again.