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SALT LAKE CITY — There are warning signs that can tip people off to whether their identity has been compromised. But, officials say it's harder to tell if a child's Social Security number is being illegally used.
When an adult has had their identity stolen, there are some ways the victim can tell it's happened. Some of these warning signs, according to dailyfinance.com, include the victim's credit card being declined unexpectedly, or mysterious charges popping up on the victim's statement.
Scott Morrill with the Utah Attorney General's Office said these warning signs might not be the same for children.
"Children, even though they have a Social Security number, they certainly don't have credit history or a credit report with the agencies," he said. "Therefore, it's much more challenging to contact the agencies and see if there is a credit history for that child."
There are some programs, like the Attorney General's Child Identity Program, that ask credit monitoring services to see if a child's Social Security number has been used to establish credit for someone else.
"If they find some, they'll suppress that information and then contact the parents/guardian and see if they can work it out," Morill said.
However, they're mostly seeing cases in which criminals don't use a child's ID for credit, Morrill said.
"We'll see many cases where somebody is using a child's Social Security number just for employment," he said.
Unfortunately, he said too few business owners use the E-Verify system to check if the person applying for a job is using a fake Social Security number.
Morrill said he has also heard of cases in which a parent tried to sign their kids up for a savings account at a bank just to be told their child's Social Security number is already being used by someone else. Even if a parent finds out this is happening to their child, it can be hard to prove who actually owns that Social Security number.
"The parents of the child who has the real Social Security number can not obtain the information of who is using that information at the bank. There are privacy rule and regulations that prohibit that," Morrill explained.
However, parents are not totally without options. Morrill said they can fill out a request with the Social Security office to prove who a Social Security number really belongs to.
