Why Children Are an Attractive Target
A child’s Social Security number is, in a specific way, more valuable to an identity thief than an adult’s: it’s rarely attached to any existing credit activity, which means fraud can go undetected for years, often until the child applies for their first credit card, student loan, or apartment lease as a young adult and discovers a stranger has been using their identity since elementary school. There’s no natural checkpoint that would catch it earlier, since nobody is checking a five-year-old’s credit report for suspicious activity.
The Law That Makes This Easy: The 2018 Federal Freeze Law
Before September 2018, freezing a minor’s credit was inconsistent and sometimes not available at all, depending on the state and the credit bureau. The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act of 2018 changed that nationally: it requires all three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) to offer a free credit freeze for children under 16 at a parent, guardian, or authorized representative’s request. If the bureau doesn’t already have a file for your child, which is common since minors rarely have credit activity, it creates one for the specific purpose of freezing it, so no one can open new credit in your child’s name while it’s active.
The same law also covers foster children, allowing a person representing a minor in foster care to request the freeze. Once a child turns 16, the freeze law’s automatic minor provisions no longer apply, and the young adult can manage their own freeze directly with each bureau going forward.
How to Actually Do It
- Contact all three bureaus separately, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion each require their own request; freezing with one does not freeze with the others.
- Have documentation ready: your own government-issued ID, proof you’re the parent or legal guardian (typically your child’s birth certificate, or guardianship paperwork if applicable), and your child’s Social Security number.
- Requests submitted online or by phone must generally be processed within one business day; mailed requests can take longer.
- Keep the PIN or password each bureau gives you in a safe place, you’ll need it to lift the freeze later, when your child is old enough to legitimately need credit.
Beyond the Freeze
- Be careful with your child’s Social Security number on school forms, sports league paperwork, and medical intake forms, ask why it’s needed before providing it; many forms request it out of habit rather than actual necessity.
- Watch for warning signs unrelated to credit specifically: unexpected mail addressed to your child (pre-approved credit offers, collection notices, jury duty summons), which can be an early indicator something is already wrong.
- Consider identity monitoring designed for minors if you want ongoing alerts rather than a one-time freeze, though the freeze itself is the single highest-impact, free step available.
The Bottom Line
Freezing your child’s credit costs nothing, takes about the same effort as freezing your own, and closes off the single most common way child identity theft actually happens: someone opening new credit using a Social Security number that no one is watching. There’s very little downside, since your child has no legitimate reason to need open credit until they’re old enough to apply for it themselves.
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