I first told you about the massive data breach at PowerSchool a major education technology software company used by 16,000 educational institutions with 50 million students in January. The hacker claimed to have harvested sensitive personal information of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers. The compromised information included the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and medical information along with much additional personal informaion of students and teachers.
Now Matthew Lane, a 19 year old college student from Massachusetts has entered into a plea agreement and admitted that he hacked PowerSchool. He potentially faces a two year prison sentence.
While we know that identity theft is a major problem for adults, it is also a huge problem for children. According to Michael Bruemmer the Vice President of Consumer Protection for Experian 25% of minors will have their identities stolen before they turn 18. Identity thieves steal the identity of a child and then run up large debts using the credit of the child, who generally does not become aware that his or her identity has been stolen until he or she reaches older teen years when the teenager might first apply for a car loan or financial aid for college.
TIPS
If you find out that you or your children have become a victim of identity theft, notify each of the three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion of the crime and ask them to investigate and remove the false information from your files.
Parents also should, as much as possible, try to limit the places that have their child’s Social Security number and become familiar with the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act which helps you protect the privacy of your child’s school records and enables you to opt out of information sharing by the school with third parties. You also should freeze the credit reports of your children. Until 2018 there was no national law that allowed the credit reports of children to be frozen, but in the wake of the major Equifax data breach, Congress passed laws that now permit children’s credit reports to be frozen and unfrozen for free.
Here are the links to information about how to freeze your child’s credit reports at each of the three major credit reporting agencies.
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/identity-theft/freezing-your-childs-credit-report-faq
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/