When I think back to holding our newborn baby in the hospital, some key words come to mind: precious, sweet, and innocent.
And that's why this story bothers me so much. Because it's about hackers who will violate the innocence of newly born and identified children along with the mom that gave birth to them.
A company that does research on the dark web, Terbium Labs, says its analysts have come across Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, and mother's names for sale on the dark web.
You can see the ad below for "Infant fullz-get em befor tax season."
"Fullz" is dark web parlance for "full identity packages" that identity thieves can use to open credit cards and take out loans. It is also a large part of what they need to file fradulent tax returns.
In this case, the advertised Infant IDs are worth about $300 in Bitcoin apiece. That's a lot more than the price ID thieves pay for grownups.
The value is significantly higher because identifitying information for childred can sometimes be used for years before anyone detects the fraud.
Some thieves use the information to add a child tax credit to fradulent tax returns they file. Each child credit is worth up to $1,000, so basically, three times the investment here.
Other child IDs have been used to receive government benefits and open credit cards.
CNN recently talked to a woman who had her ID stolen as a young girl:
Christina Warren—a former reporter who now works for a large tech company—was about 12-years-old when she started receiving credit card bills. After collection notices piled up, her parents had to convince creditors her identity had been stolen.
Credit reporting agencies said they fixed the issue, but she later had trouble getting her first credit card.
"It was a massive headache," Warren told CNN Tech. "I didn't realize until six years later that it was still ongoing."
If someone steals my ID, I'm sure I'll be upset.
But if someone ever steals the ID of our kids while they are kids, that would seem like a total violation.
Do you agree there's a difference here?
