Identity Theft is defined as a fraudulent acquisition and use of a person's private identifying information, usually for financial gain.
Identity theft is an issue that many adults face in their lives. A growing issue is the identity theft of children, and a big cause of this issue comes from the information schools have about their students. School districts in 26 different states ask for students' Social Security numbers. The collection of the Social Security numbers is a result of a campaign to more precisely track their progress. There have been multiple reports for that information getting into the wrong hands leading to identity theft of these children. Identity protection scans of more than 40,000 children in the United States show that 10.2 percent of those children had their Social Security number used by someone else, a Carnegie Mellon CyLab report states. The adult percent rate is only .2 percent. The value of the children's identity compared to adults is due to a low discovery rate because the child will not use their number for a long period of time and parents don't usually monitor their child's identities for fraud. Additionally, the children will have unflawed credit scores which are appealing to anyone who personally has poor credit. The Social Security numbers paired with a name and birth date can be useful for illegal immigration, organized crime, and friends and family attempting to circumvent bad credit ratings. The impact on the child's future is immense. With a stolen identity, it may become difficult securing a student loan approval, a job, or a place to live. North Dakota seems to be leading the way with a structure in place to prevent this identity theft. They assign their students a 10-digit ID number when they enroll that tracks their performance, leaving no need for Social Security numbers.
Additional Information can be found through these websites:
- Oklahoma Money Matters ID Theft
- NBCDFW ID Theft
-USGovInfo ID Theft at School
- SecruityMagazine ID Theft Victims
- Huffingtonpost Student Identity Theft
This issue should be addressed in the classroom setting. Including this topic in a unit on health and safety with other topics such as internet safety, cyberbullying, etc. could be immensely beneficial to the students and even the parents of the students. I would potentially assign a project where my students research different health and safety topics, including identity theft, then have them present the information in a format of a flyer that I could pass out during parent teacher conferences. This would increase awareness among students and parents.
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ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteThis was probably a tough topic to cover about teaching in the classroom and I can see why. Teaching young students about identity theft and why it can be harmful is probably difficult. This topic would probably be used with older students. In my placement last semester, we talked about identity theft when the students were introduced about social security cards and what they are used for and how to prevent identity theft. I found this article that is about an IRS employee who decided to embezzle those people whom she helped with their tax returns. I was thinking that this article may be beneficial in helping students realize the dangers they face when their social security information is given out anywhere and how it is important to know when and at what times it is appropriate to give out that number. Especially for social skills, students should know not to give that out at any time. Here is the link:
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/02/former_irs_employee_in_alabama.html
This article was interesting to me.
What ideas would you use to introduce the topic to students? I know going with talking about social security cards was beneficial, but what about the younger students?
I agree it is strange/difficult topic to teach in the classroom, but I do notice and value its importance. I think to introduce the topic to student it would be beneficial to incorporate it into a unit of internet safety which is becoming more and more common to teach in the classroom. I would want to provide as many tangible examples as possible with this topic because I feel as if this topic might fly over all of the students heads if it was just discussed. As for younger students, I think it would be important just to teach them about internet safety and not using their name and personal information on every website they come across.
DeleteThis particular topic is difficult for younger students, but it is very important for high school students to be aware of ID theft. I recall my undergrad, where my first 3 years my ID# was my SSN. They made the switch my senior year.
ReplyDeleteWhile the topic is probably over younger students' heads, it's still possible to teach responsibility with data, treating it like talking to strangers. We don't go into detail of what strangers do when they abduct children; rather, we say, "Don't talk to people you're unfamiliar with," "say, 'I need an adult' if you feel uncomfortable," etc. We can say to children, "Don't type your address or phone number when you're on the computer," and things like that.