As cyber crime increases, online identity theft attacks are increasing at alarming rates each year. Scary part is there are absolutely no signs of it slowing down! 

All categories of persons are of interest to these thieves, but the scariest of all is our teenagers are not being spared either! 

How and why would our teens even remotely be a target??  *Trust me, I asked the same*. 

But this reason falls under two good reasons.

1. Clean credit
2.  Fairly low level of identity theft awareness among teens.

Think teens learn enough in school or by us parents trying to give them ‘a good education’, and to make ‘right choices’?  WRONG!

Now they need to be highly educated about the dangers ofidentity theft.  This is vital in preventing them from falling victim to this notorious epidemic crime!

One major concern is social networking sites.  Not only are these sites overly popular, but are spreading like wild fire over the net these days. 

Sites such as Myspace are known to be favorite breeding grounds for identity thieves to target their next victims.  But teenagers on Myspace are the most ‘targeted’ for their freeness to give out personal information including their full name, age, address, ect.

In doing so, not only does this make them easy targets for unethical online identity thieves, but gives an wide open ‘come on in and take me for what you want’ to these predators! (not to mention the deaths, rapes, kidnaps that have also happened)

According to a survey conducted by Qweest Communications Teen Council Program, here are 5 top reasons why teens are so vulnerable toidentity theft attacks:

1. Chatting, and in some cases, meeting up with strangers via their social networking page
2. Unaware of ‘phishing’ emails (trust me I fight my teen son about this all the time)
3. Posting all their personal details on various sites
4. Storing personal info (ex. Usernames, passwords, ssn) in cell phones
5. Revealing their SSN on online job applications

Teens are more willing and trusting also to provide their private details in order to be more popular amongst their peer group.

Identity theft experts agree that a teen’s identity is far more valuable than money itself!

WOW!  So many adults are in denial that they will never fall victim. If our children are victims, how on earth can an adult feel safe?

 So now that I have your attention..you are asking....

How can one protect themselves and now their children?

Well there are many ways to help prevent.  But wouldn’t it be so nice if it could beSimple?

Well it can!  Here are ways to protect yourself:

• Protecting your whole identity, not just your credit.
• Protection for your entire family including children.
• Full identity monitoring - proactively watching out for
  all forms of identity theft, including credit fraud.
• Having a truly comprehensive identity recovery service
  - in the event the unthinkable should happen.
• Having trained professionalshandle it all for you from
  beginning to end.

And that is all you have to do.  Does this sound too good to be true?  Well, it is very true!

Please friends....protect yourself!

Jennifer Sasser

478-338-2469