Identity thieves are looking for new ways to steal your identity every day.  They are also looking at ways where they can use someone’s identity for a longer period of time and go unnoticed.

One area that has seen a large growth in identity theft is child identity theft.  This is where the identity thief gets a hold of a child’s Social Security Number and uses that to start making fraudulent transactions.

Once misconception is that the identity theft victim needs to be rich or have a lot of assets.  Not only is this not true and the rise of identity theft activity using minors is proof.  Once the identity thief has a valid Social Security Number, they can usually create any identity they like.  They can change the data of birth, home address, employment information, etc.

Most companies just check to see if the Social Security Number is valid and nothing else and the identity thieves know this.  This leaves them with the ability to purchase homes, automobiles, open credit accounts, receive medical treatment, apply for employment and other transactions using a child’s identity.

This form of identity thief is becoming more popular because the identity thief knows that they have quite of few years to perform fraudulent transactions before anyone would suspect that something is wrong.  Most children don’t have an active credit file or have any reason to check their credit.

Child identity theft is just one way that an identity thief can steal your identity.  As I mentioned before, they really aren’t concerned about how well off the victim might be.  To them it is just another identity they can use to commit crime.  In any case once your identity is stolen, it will cause you a lot of time and headache to restore it.