Protect your child's identity

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- From pre-school to college, the back-to-school season can pose serious threats to your children’s identity. The growing list of things parents and young adults have to register and create logins and passwords for online creates prime opportunities for identity thieves.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, six percent of identity-theft complaints involve victims who are 19 years old and younger and 20 percent of complaints involve victims who range in age from 20 to 29. This demographic includes those entering college or new to the workforce. These percentages mean that an alarming 786,000 people 19 years old and younger and a staggering 2.6 million 20- to 29-year-olds will become identity-theft victims each year.

Paul Carroll, personal CFO and principal of Efficient Wealth Management in The Woodlands, Texas, says there are easy ways parents and young adults can protect themselves and their children from hackers and breakdowns in online and digital protection.

“It can be as simple as using a password manager that creates complex and distinctive passwords for all of your sites, which then houses them in an encrypted format,” said Carroll. “The program enables you to generate a new password and save it, that way users don’t have to remember to do so themselves.”

The password managers can be completely controlled by the parents who designates the users, or children in this case, and what they have access to. Users never see the usernames or passwords associated with the logins.

“Although a password manager can be very valuable to small businesses, anyone can use them to protect their sensitive information,” said Carroll. “Using a password manager is much better than the note pad in your purse, the document on your iPad or the sticky note on your planner. And, lots of these programs have mobile/smart phone components as well so all your electronic information sharing devices are secure.”

Efficient Wealth Management is creating a video series and workbook, Intelligent Wealth Protection, that is designed to help their clients and others protect themselves against threats to their personal and financial information. The first series covers computer-based threats including viruses and malware, hardware and electronic devices, and encryption and firewalls.

At the start of the school year, Carroll recommends getting a password manager that can change all your passwords to hard-to-crack alternatives while making your password life easier.

“If you use the same password or series of passwords for several different sites, including the school’s – stop it right now,” said Carroll. “Reusing a password only makes it that much easier for hackers to get into your account and wreak havoc. The ability to attack and exploit personal information is consistently outpacing the ability to defend and protect. The digital defense strategy is simply trying to stay one step ahead of the hacker.”