Identity protection scans of more than 40,000 children in the United States show that 10.2 percent of those children have had their Social Security number used by someone else, a Carnegie Mellon CyLab report states. That rate is 51 times higher than the .2 percent rate for adults.
Additional points from the Child Identity Theft study note that unused Social Security numbers are uniquely valuable to thieves – the numbers can be paired with any name and birth date, which can be particularly useful for illegal immigration. The probability of discovery is low, as the child will not use the number for a long period of time and parents don’t typically monitor their children’s identities for fraud.