Freezing your credit has been sound advice for several years, but for many it was a financial and technical burden not worth dealing with. In May 2018, Donald Trump signed legislation that would give consumers access to credit freezes without cost, making it an easier option to swallow for many. I’ve followed this guidance for myself for many years and would strongly recommend it for anyone who has credit. It’s now easier than ever to temporarily relax a credit freeze if new credit is needed, so now that the financial burden is gone, just do it! But what about protecting your children; they don’t have credit yet, so they should be OK, right? Unfortunately not. Late last year, Brian Krebs published an article on this topic and after a chilling presentation by Brett Johnson during Triangle InfoSeCon, I decided to venture down the path of freezing my daughters credit. Brett did a great job of explaining how a bad actor could leverage a minors clean, non-existent credit record to create a “synthetic identity” by linking a new name, birthdate, address and phone number, creating a new, fraudulent credit record. It’s difficult enough to not completely understand how or why this works, yet it’s seems easy enough that determined criminal with dark web connections can easily steal child’s identity.
1 in 40 households with children under the age of 18 have been impacted by child identity theft — Card Trak
Now that the process for freezing your credit is “free”, all you need is time to do it. Unfortunately the effort required to freeze a minor’s credit is much more than someone who already has an established credit record. The 3 credit bureaus can easily identify adults because of knowledge-based questions like — which address is one from the last 10 years, or your mortgage loan is closest to $500, $800, or $1200. Being a minor, knowledge-based information like this doesn’t exist, and minors are not linked to their parents information, thus we must jump through hoops to verify we want to freeze their non-existing credit.
The following process isn’t easy, but it only costs time. It’s worth it to ensure your child’s credit information cannot likely compromised before they are old enough to even have credit. Before you can get started, you’ll need the following information:
- 3 copies of your minor’s Social Security Card
- 3 copies of your Driver’s License or other government-issued ID. If you are not a parent listed on the minor’s birth certificate, you’ll also need 3 copies of guardianship papers.
- 1 copy of a utility bill, bank or insurance statement to verify your proof of address
- 1 copy of your Social Security Card
- 1 copy of your birth certificate
- Lots of patience!
I know this seems like a lot of personal information to send out via mail — there really needs to be a better way to do this. I’d recommend you send your mail directly from the post office rather than via a mailbox or drop box — that way your information is less likely to fall into the wrong hands. Grab a pen, fix a drink and fire up your printer/scanner/copier (if you’re using a scanner/copier that is not yours, make sure you don’t leave originals/copies/mistakes for others to find — this is your and your child’s personal data!).
TransUnion
TransUnion’s website for determining if your minor has an existing credit record is available here, but their process doesn’t actually freeze your child’s credit. The FAQ for their process mentions that their process is a suppression of your minor’s credit — not a freeze. Read more about suppression below, but it’s the best option for protecting a minor at TransUnion. To “suppress” a Minor’s credit with TransUnion you will need photocopies of each of these:
- Minor’s birth certificate
- Minor’s Social Security Card
- Guardian/Parent Drivers License or other government issued ID. If you are not a parent listed on the child’s birth certificate, also include your guardianship documents.
- Letter stating who the Credit Suppression request is for.
Mail or fax above documents to (610-546–4771) here:
Child ID Theft
PO Box 2000
Chester, PA 19016
After about a week, you’ll receive a form letter indicating that a freeze has been placed for the above person along with their file number. There is no PIN associated with a suppression, so you’ll be required to send the same documents back to un-suppress or it will automatically happen when the person turns 18 (see section from the FAQ below):
Credit suppression is a free service for minors 17 or younger. It offers the same amount of protection as a protected consumer freeze. TransUnion will suppress the file until the age of 18. Credit suppression blocks a creditor from obtaining the minors credit report. You do not have to request the removal of a credit suppression, the suppression will expire the month that the minor is set to turn 18.
A PIN is referenced in the above letter but not included , so if you call the phone number for TransUnion, you’ll find out that there are no PIN’s associated with suppression requests, nor can you create an account to check their credit score. If you do wish to check their score, you will to set a password on their account — this is optional. To do this, you need yet another request to TransUnion asking them to set a password. Include the name and file # referenced in your letter and send the request to:
TransUnion Protected Consumer Freeze
PO Box 380
Woodlyn, PA 19016
You will receive confirmation that the password has been set on the account. The password is needed if you call in to check the credit status since a PIN is not allowed for minors. Simple right? TransUnion was the most difficult credit bureau, by far, to process for a minor, so if you’ve made it this far, you’re almost halfway there.
Experian
Processing a minor request with Experian wasn’t necessarily a walk in the park, but it wasn’t TransUnion confusing with freeze vs. suppress. They do, however, reference this document which requires completion. Unfortunately the directions aren’t exactly clear what information you fill in about yourself vs. your minor. So what did I do? I gave them both — maybe more information than I needed. To get started, you will need to send in photocopies of each of these:
- Minor’s birth certificate
- Minor’s Social Security Card
- Guardian/Parent Drivers License or other government issued ID. If you are not a parent listed on the child’s birth certificate, also include your guardianship documents.
- Copy of Utility bill, bank statement, or insurance statement (for proof of address)
- Letter stating who the freeze is for and who (along with your name, address, birthdate and SSN) is requesting it on their behalf OR you can print out this form and fill it out. It appears that this form is asking for your information, so you should also include somewhere on the form the information of the minor whose credit you wish to freeze.
Mail these documents to:
Experian
PO Box 9554
Allen, TX 75013
You will receive a PIN number from Experian addressed to your Minor. The PIN can be used to temporarily lift the freeze. To permanently remove the freeze, you will need the same documents provided above to prove you are authorized to remove it.
Equifax
Equifax isn’t necessarily the easiest, but they seem to have decent documentation about their process and their forms actually make sense. Here is the information that I used to freeze my minor’s credit file. You will need to send in photocopies of each of these:
- Minor’s birth certificate
- Minor’s Social Security Card
- Guardian/Parent Drivers License or other government issued ID. If you are not a parent listed on the child’s birth certificate, also include your guardianship documents.
- Your Social Security Card
- Your birth certificate
- This completed document
Mail these documents to:
Equifax Security Freeze
PO Box 105788
Atlanta, GA 30348
You will receive a PIN number from Equifax. The PIN can be used to temporarily lift the freeze. To permanently remove, you will need the PIN + same documents provided above to prove your authority to remove it.
That’s it. Have another drink. If you’ve made it this far, be prepared to spend an additional two weeks waiting for follow-up correspondence, and even longer if you want a PIN from TransUnion. When it’s all said and done you should have received confirmation that your minor’s credit record has been frozen (or suppressed) with all of the 3 major credit reporting bureaus until lifted by you or until they turn 18.
Hopefully this information has been helpful and will continue to be helpful to others as this process hasn’t been exactly well documented or discussed beyond “you should freeze your child’s credit”. Now that it’s been documented, my hope is that each of these bureaus make this process easier, otherwise, there will be many minors whose information will be ripe for linking to a “synthetic identity”.