A newer trend of Identity theft is appearing today and it involves your children. With an increase in monitoring and credit freezing ability, it is become harder for identity thieves to catch a wary individual with an active credit file. As a result, thieves are now focusing their attention on where the monitoring is not occurring at all: your children. No one until very recently expected that children's identifications would targeted. After all, you don't think about your child's credit record until maybe they need an ATM card or a student loan for college. However, thieves are finding that children's social security numbers and names allow for identity theft for years before the loss can be detected. And it's usually found when the child makes their first, honest contact with the financial world requesting or applying for an account.

The method this theft is simple. Fraudulently request from a government registrar or office of vital statistics the birth certificate of a child. Once they get this record, they have the name, social security number, birth location, and other identifiers. All of this info can be used to then open credit accounts and charge away. Most children and their parents don't find the damage until later when the child needs credit for the first time.

Children and teens' own behavior can also put them at risk, especially on the Internet. Casual attitudes about identity and information sharing over the Internet also put teens as well as their homes at risk. Social network websites like Facebook.com, Friendster.com, and MySpace.com let students not only post their favorite music and relationship status, but also their addresses, cell-phone numbers, and previous employers' information that could be used to create a credit account in their names.

The ways to prevent this theft are the same as those for an adult:

• Talk to your children about the consequences of sharing information regarding home, identity, and other profiling information on the internet.  Make them aware and Educate, Educate, Educate.
• Monitor your child's credit record regularly.
• Guard under secure containment all sensitive information for your children. If you don't need the documentation, shred it immediately.
• Use a credit freeze, or credit lock service on your children's credit record.
• Utilize monitoring services that watch the child's credit and notify you by email and/or phone of a change.
• Use passwords for access to any of your children's accounts, and change any Internet passwords on your children's accounts regularly.

You can't protect your children from every harm out there that they may come across, but you can definitely protect their credit and make it much harder to steal.