Table of Contents
SurfWisely Synopsis:
Why does this matter to me?
For Parents: Identity theft is real and scary, and unfortunately, your children are not immune. How can you protect them in this area? A little bit of training in proper cybersecurity practices can go a long way.
For PTAs: Keeping students safe on school computers takes a significant amount of training and supervision. One of the dangers you need to protect them from is child identity theft. Teaching kids what this is can make a large impact, and we have a program that can do just that in a fun and engaging fashion.
For Principals: You have enough worries on your plate — student ID theft shouldn’t be one. By implementing a high-quality cybersecurity curriculum, you can ensure kids understand what this danger is as well as how to prevent it from happening to themselves. Our easy to use and engaging platform makes the princess simple, too.
More About Student Identity Theft Prevention
Cybersecurity isn’t just a topic for kids to learn about for future purposes. Online dangers can affect them in their youth, too. Particularly identity thieves, who have recently proven to be a significant issue for students today.
Some common types of identity theft include medical identity theft, tax identity theft, credit theft, and more. Unfortunately, kids can fall victim to every kind.
Some of the best tips to help students prevent identity theft for students and adults alike include:
- Keep social security cards at home, preferably in parent possession. Teach students to not give out their social security numbers to illegitimate sources.
- Avoid sharing sensitive information such as phone numbers, addresses, debit or credit card numbers, bank accounts, and birthdays, especially when people or online forms ask for it.
- Review social media posts that can aid in the information-gathering process for identity theft.
- Use smartphone security features, including fingerprint or face identification as often as possible.
- Utilize firewall and virus protection on personal and school computers.
- Changing passwords after data breaches at financial institutions or other accounts that have personal information stored within them.
- Teach students to not send personal or financial information via email, as phishing scams can often be difficult to spot.
- Signing up for identity protection services when it is deemed necessary (past breeches, etc).
- Make a recovery plan in case identity theft occurs, including reaching out to local police and law enforcement and contacting credit bureaus.
One of the strongest identity theft protection measures for students is freezing credit reports. A credit freeze ensures no one can open new credit cards or loans with a student’s social security card — which are processes they aren’t likely to do in high school anyway. It can keep them safe from sneaky financial actions that can cause so much harm to their future endeavors.
This action won’t lower the future score, either. It simply keeps students safe before their credit scores start to take off.If you’re looking for support in training your students to prevent them from becoming victims of identity theft and other cybersecurity threats, our online internet safety program can help. Our gamified app is both fun and informational, helping kids learn about identity theft, cyberbullying, malware, and so much more. We’d be happy to fill you in on the details anytime — just contact our team and tell them when you’re ready to chat.
