If you steal something, will you jump out and sell it when everyone’s looking for it or will you wait until everybody stops caring about it?
The latter option is the new choice of identity thieves; effectively giving the term “warehousing” a whole new meaning
Warehousing is when a criminal steals the information of an individual and keeps it stored over a period of around six months before exploiting that information for personal gain. This minimizes the risk of the criminal’s methods being identified and traced back to him or her.
This is especially dangerous to children, as they start out with a clean credit slate and need years to reach 18 – especially since kids are less careful about their personal details on social networks.
Take Facebook, for example. It’s a veritable treasure-trove for the determined ID thief: full name, photos, phone numbers, school being attended and even the home address are just some details that can be exploited in later dates. These can be used by an ID thief to apply for a credit card, sucking up money from it and then leaving it to the child (or the child’s parents) to sort out the financial mess.
That’s definitely not a welcome experience for a teen that has just hit adulthood.
Although by law, you're entitled to receive a free copy of your credit report annually from any of the 3 credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, this free report will not reveal your actual credit score.
To view the actual score that the lenders are seeing, get your score (plus 3 in 1 credit report) from creditreport.com for a free trial.