Are Your Children’s Identities Safe?

Hi, my name is Julie and I am a mother of two little kids, age 2 and 5.  I am also an executive at Debix, the Identity Protection Network, and have been chasing criminals and stopping fraud over the past decade.  Recently, I helped design a new product to protect children’s identities.  As usual with any new product launch (July 28^th, 2008), I asked my friends at my daughter’s fifth birthday party to enroll and give me feedback on what they thought. 

I was stunned to find that two of the fourteen children at the party (age 4 and age 9) had someone else using their identities.  This hit so close to home that I decided to research the size of the problem.

So we scanned 500 children who were under the age of 18, and found that 1 in 20 kids (5%) already have someone else using their social security number.  To put that in perspective, that means about one kid in every classroom in the US is a victim of identity theft.  Worse yet, the average child victim had over $12,000 in debt and 12% of the child victims are age 5 and younger - shocking!

To ensure the results were accurate we hired Javelin Strategy and Research, a top-tier analyst firm to analyze the results and report their conclusions.   You can download the research report here: www.debix.com/research.

You can hear stories from the parents about their children being victims at (http://news.debix.com/index.php/categories/child-victims/).

As I talk about this problem with other Moms, the first question is always, “what does it mean that their kid is a victim of identity theft?”  It means the child will not be able to use his credit when he needs it for things as important as college loans, first apartments or even a first job.  As part of my research I met Lindsey, a college student at Texas State, who is living this problem.  When she applied for her first internship competing against 400 other candidates, she was thrilled when she got the job and received the company welcome gift.  Unfortunately a few weeks later, she received a letter rescinding her job offer - she was told she was not hirable because someone else was using her social security number.  After what she calls “a full time job” of working to clear her name for six months, she was able to restore her identity and get the job.  

The next question I get is “how can this happen?  Surely companies know the social security number belongs to a kid.”  The answer is no.  There is no system in place to warn companies and the Social Security Administration does not publish a database of social security numbers with names and ages of kids.  The social security administration has a formula for issuing a social security number, but you can’t tell the difference between a number that was issued to a 39 year old immigrant to the US and a newborn.  About all you can tell from the number is the year and location it was issued (check out SSA Algorithm for issuing SSNs.)

It is our job as parents to protect our children and give them every possible advantage when they become an adult.  We have to protect our kids as best we can so when they start out they have a clean record and aren’t starting adult life at a disadvantage.

The solution I built at Debix finds the problems and restores the child’s identity for $20 per year.  While we try to keep our pricing affordable, we also took the time to publish the steps a parent would need to do if they wanted to protect their kids on their own at www.childrenscreditcrisis.org. 

I also worked with the FBI to produce a webcast to teach parents how to protect their kids from Identity Theft.  Feel free to pass this information along.

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Do you have any stories to share about identity theft either from personal experience or a friend’s?

Not being one who writes haiku’s often (i.e., probably not since 5th grade), I had to rely on these examples from the Copyblogger post:

“Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of 17 syllables broken up into three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.

Here are two quick examples found on Twitter Search with the tag #haiku:

Been up way too long / Need about a week’s more sleep / Might not be enough

~ @MFlanders

The furnace is fixed / breath invisible again / how much is the bill?

~ @badboc

Got it? Obviously, the more clever, comedic, or compelling your haiku, the better your chances of winning.”

So here’s my haiku:

Working day and night / To change the world for parents / One diaper a day

I was going to write at the end ‘one diaper an hour’ but since it’s late and my brain isn’t at 100%, I wasn’t sure if ‘hour’ would be read as one syllable or two depending on what city/state/country the judges were from.  So I changed it to ‘a day’ to avoid any controversy.  Plus it can be a stinky (wish you could change that diaper more often) experience in a a start-up/small business/Internet endeavor so I figured if the diaper shoe fits…

I never thought I’d be that excited about a printer, but here I am writing about one.  The main reason it’s so exciting to write about this one is because I got it free!  That’s like getting $350 (including ink) of stuff you can really use! 

I bet you are wondering why I got it free. Well it’s because I (@aruni) and Barbara Jones are both on twitter.  Barbara runs a company called One2One Network - The Women’s Word of Mouth Marketing Network and she discovered me on twitter and began following me a while back. 

OK, it’s not just because I’m on twitter, but part of getting lucky is being somewhere where people are looking for people like you.  So she probably thought since I write reasonably well in English and my blog is read by many entrepreneurially minded women, men, moms, and dads, that my experience with the printer might provide an interesting perspective. 

When she first asked me if I’d like an Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One printer, I tweeted back something like “heck yeah!” I then told my husband and he being the one that manages our home IT set-up as well as being our resident rocket scientist, was immediately skeptical.  First he grumbled “Well, what’s wrong with our current HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-One” that we’ve had for a few years.  The only response I could meekly muster was that the scanning feature didn’t work well.  He then asked if it was network ready (not just wireless…it had to be able to be plugged into with an Ethernet connection).  He also said it had to be Mac compatible.  Of course Barbara cheerfully tweeted it met all of those requirements.  She was probably wondering why I was looking a gift horse in the mouth or at minimum what kind of man I was married to. 

When it arrived and he opened the box, he took one look at the design and features and cracked a half smile (a rare occurrence when it comes to technical items - unless it’s a new Mac, Blackberry, or other Apple product) and said “You did good.”  I nodded knowingly thinking to myself ‘don’t I always!‘  

He set it up and the last few weeks we’ve been using it for a variety of things from printing work related stuff, to kid’s birthday cards, maps, to scanning documents.  I have to say I’m impressed and here are the top 5 reasons why: 

1. My husband was impressed making it easier to get it installed and tested!
2. It has a document feeder just like a copier.  This is such a *HUGE* feature for scanning or copying multiple pages.  I no longer have to put one page down, open the lid, put another page down, etc.  I just set the pages I want to scan or copy on the top and press a few buttons.  It also scans to .pdf which I love!
3. It’s Mac compatible (see also item #1 above)
4. It’s WiFi and Ethernet ready (see also item #1 above) [Interesting side note: the Wi-Fi Alliance is headquartered at the Austin Technology Incubator, which is where I work during the day]
5. The design is very cool, modern, and sleek and fits perfectly on top of my little file cabinet.  It has a touch screen front interface for one touch copy and scanning.   

The only issue I’ve had with it is printing pages with heavy color and that’s probably because we use newspaper cheap paper.  A few months ago (for some cheap wad/had a coupon unknown reason) I bought a case of Office Depot premium multipurpose paper and it’s pretty thin.  I think I just began printing on it using the HP and now with the deep colors in the Epson, the pages sometimes come out feeling wet.  I changed the setting to draft but then it kind of dulls the color.  I guess I’ll have to suffer through some wet pages until I finish this case of cheap paper! 

So, although inertia (and the economy) might have prevented me from replacing our HP printer, I can honestly say that the ability to scan multiple pages easily would have swung me over to the Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One printer side of the camp quite some time ago. 

So thank you Epson, Barbara, and oh yeah twitter!

However, given that a historic, unprecedented event has just happened in our lifetime, I felt compelled to write this post.  I am SO excited that Barack Obama was elected to be the next president of the United States!  Not just because I agree with much of his political philosophy, but also because he’s brown, has brains, and has the potential to heal wounds created throughout the world.

If you are someone who has not grown up with brown skin, this might not make sense to you but in my opinion this is a huge affirmation of the American dream.  My uncle, a geography professor, was turned away from a restaurant while visiting Virginia New Mexico because of the color of his skin.  When I was 8 or 9 years old, a blonde little boy turned to me in the walkways outside my elementary school and yelled at me calling me the ‘n’ word.  I had never heard that word before, yet I felt the hate emanating from this young boy, and I still remember the fear I felt standing there all alone wondering why this boy hated me so much. 

I’m not even Black (I’m South Asian), but I (and other members of my family) were lumped into the non-White category.  When I lived in West Texas, the difference was even more pronounced.  I grew up self conscious of my skin color and even now I have moments where I wonder if I truly fit in…despite being married to a White man!   Women and Black men have had to consistently work twice as hard and be twice as good to be recognized at the same level as White men in this country. 

Time will tell if Obama was the right pick, but the fact that he was picked in this country in 2008 means to me that we’ve reached a turning point in our history.  People who are not White and not even men (thanks to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin) now have a living breathing example of how it can be done.

Obama, to me, epitomizes working hard (no riding daddy’s coattails), focusing on education, prioritizing family values, and taking a thoughtful analytic (that man is smart!) approach before acting.  As an added bonus, he appears to know how to speak proper English!

Not only has he broken color barriers, he has broken social media barriers.  He has run the biggest, first, and most effective political campaign that has ever been run (oh what money can buy)!  By his campaign’s avid use of twitter, YouTube, blogs, MySpace, email campaigns, etc., he has single handedly affirmed an entire new industry and demonstrated how using the Internet and social media can have a huge impact on the success of campaigns, businesses, and causes.  If there was any doubt by individuals and big companies as to the efficacy of social media, it has now been shattered!   

I was 3 when I came to the United States with my parents, and we landed in Pennsylvania.  I was 21 when I became a naturalized citizen in New Mexico.  I am now many years older, live in Texas, and tonight I saw the window of opportunity open wider for my light brown kids…

God Bless America!

I felt myself nodding knowingly inside when I read it.  How true it is in relation to both Love and Business.  How relatively easy it can be to start a business or fall in love.  We tell ourselves, it’s just an idea/romantic feeling…let’s see where it goes.  One thing after another happens and if you don’t chicken out (or the playing field of potential significant others or stable jobs doesn’t pull you away), you find yourself: 

No one goes into business or marriage believing that one day it might ‘stop’ or end.  Yet, 80 to 90% of the time businesses (e.g., technology start-ups, restaurants, retail shops, side businesses) fail or barely break even, and last I heard 50 to 60% of marriages end in divorce and that rate has been increasing over the years.  So much so that venture capitalists are actually funding sites like Divorce360.com and Agreed Divorces.com.  They should also fund a site called ShutDownYourBusiness.com! 

Stopping a business or a marriage is not easy.  You get up every day and say to yourself: “Something will happen to make the business work.  I’ll get funding.  I’ll get that next customer.  I can’t stop now!“  You coast in your marriage thinking “I’ll keep myself busy and things will get better or make more sense.  We’ll  make it work for the sake of the kids.“  Many times it does get better (after the sleep deprivation wears off) but sometimes you end up like Archie Bunker and Edith Bunker or other such couples who can’t stand each other but stay together because they don’t know what else to do.  Or you end up a bitter, washed up individual who finds yourself going through the motions because you have defined yourself as an entrepreneur yet you could never build a sustaining business.  You then end up feeling that life is unfair and you never got your well deserved lucky break. 

I know this post might sound depressing, but these are the odds you are playing with when you start a business or marriage.  Many entrepreneurs will fold up (and have already started to) their businesses due to tough economic times (no funding, no customers, etc.).  They will use the bad economy as a welcome excuse for not making it.  It is, after all, a justifiable/less ego-destroying way to explain to people why your business didn’t make it.  

And by all means, take the opportunity to wrap things up if you can (for your and your family’s sanity) because it is going to be tougher than normal for a while.  However, at the same time, the opportunities (volunteer help, cheaper resources, less competition) for being creative will be abundant. 

The next few years are going to be interesting.  Companies/marriages may fall apart because the changing economy ends up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  Or they might outlast the downturn and be stronger on the other side.  Many successful entrepreneurs have emerged from down economies and their success is surely a prerequisite for the economy turning around and thriving! 

I, for one, am glad to be living in this day and age.  In no other time in history (or probably not in any other country) could I have done what I’ve done, tried what I’ve tried, say what I say, write what I write, do what I do, or dream what I dream without being squashed. 

What do you think? Is Business and Love like (the US war in Iraq)? Easy to begin but hard to stop?