When Axton Betz-Hamilton set up her first utility bill at college, she soon realized something was very, very wrong. It turned out she’d been a victim of identity theft—and it had destroyed her credit rating. In 2001, when she was a 19-year-old student, Betz-Hamilton’s new utility provider demanded a $100 security deposit to turn on her service, citing her credit score. “I thought it was because I didn't have enough credit,” she told Fortune. But when a copy of her credit report turned up in her mailbox six weeks later, she learned the opposite was true. “At first, I thought credit reports must come with a lot of instructions, because my credit report should not have been thick. It should have been half a page—name, address, and a couple of student loans. I opened it and realized very quickly that credit reports do not come with a lot of instructions, but that mine was 10 pages long and full of fraudulent credit card entries.” Some of those entries dated back to 1993, when she was 11. When she disputed the file with credit bureaus, parts were removed simply because certain creditors had gone out of business. Others, however, didn’t get scrubbed from her history until they aged off—which typically takes around seven years. For most people, the idea of identity theft conjures images of anonymous, shady hackers. But for many victims—including Betz-Hamilton—the perpetrator is much closer to home. In Betz-Hamilton's case, it was her mother.
A widespread problem
Betz-Hamilton fell victim to child identity theft in the 1990s—but the crime is still widespread today.
A landmark 2011 study by Carnegie Mellon CyLab found that children are uniquely vulnerable to identity theft.
In their analysis of more than 40,000 American children, researchers at the university found that 10% had someone else using their Social Security number. That meant kids were 51 times more likely to fall victim to identity theft than adults.
Children’s identities were being used to buy homes and cars, open credit card accounts and secure employment, the report’s authors said, with the youngest victim they discovered in their analysis being just five months old.
Meanwhile, a 2021 study by Javelin Strategy found that one in 50 U.S. children fall victim to identity theft every year—with 73% of victims being targeted by someone they know personally.
Hari Ravichandran, CEO and founder of digital security firm Aura, told Fortune that the perpetrator in a child identity theft case is “very often” related to the victim.
“A lot of the time, it involves families that are in dire straits, where they're facing something like a serious economic crunch or addiction issues,” he said. “When kids are born, they get a social security number that generally never gets used until they're about 17 or 18—so there's this large window of time where there's a clean social security number available.” To read more click here.