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Mary Richards, KSL Newsradio Imagine going to get your first job out of high school and being told you are already $40,000 in debt because someone stole your identity. One young man is sharing that true story with Utah teens this week.
Zachary Friesen tells a room full of students about how, at 17, he found out that someone had used his identity years before to buy a houseboat. "I thought maybe I'd put the wrong numbers down, you know, it was my mistake. But … you start to come to that realization of, ‘No, it is you; and yes, it could happen to you,'" he said.
Friesen is now a University of Colorado student, traveling the country to warn teens they are the largest demographic targeted by identity thieves because teens often don't check their credit or use their Social Security number.
He's also talking to them about sites like MySpace and how personal information can be used by thieves and predators alike online.
For more information on how to protect yourself or your children from teen identity theft, click the related links.
