By: Wayne Rash, eWeek
Organized cyber-criminals have taken what used to be a minor domestic crime and turned it into a global ID trafficking ring. In these cases, the data that’s so valuable are the Social Security numbers of young children because they can easily be matched with any name and date of birth and used to create fraudulent identities, obtain credit or even dodge residency rules for getting work in the United States. There was a time when problems with child ID theft came from family members of young children who would use their SSNs to get around poor credit or even criminal records, but that’s changed. According to testimony by the Federal Trade Commission delivered to the House Committee on Ways and Means’ subcommittee on Social Security, “Children’s SSNs are uniquely valuable because they lack a credit history and can be paired with any name and birth date.”
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