In our previous posting, we looked at the dangers of Identity Theft for our kids. We asked the tough questions about how prepared our children are, and considered the scary notion of just how vulnerable children can be to fraud, scams, and identity theft.

The tips we offered could be applied to any age of child; but when your child enters their teenage years, everything changes. Along with dating, peer pressure, driving, and accountability, teenagers begin to enter the workforce, earn their own income, and begin to nurture a sense of independence. This new world of responsibilities also opens up teens to new threats in identity security; and considering the popularity of technology (illustrated here by Matt Hines’ column on Social Networks and their influence over online privacy), it is becoming easier to reveal and harder to protect personal details.

At IDGuardian, we wanted to share some strategies in keeping your teens and their identities protected.

• Do not open email from unknown senders and be careful about what file attachments you download. The next video or music file – even from a friend – could actually be hiding a computer virus, Trojan, or keylogger from an identity thief.  Teach your children what those online threats are and why firewalls, anti-virus, and anti-spam programs need to be kept up to date.
• Reveal as little as possible about yourself, pictures included. Always avoid revealing your date of birth, family names, pet names, home address, school, cell number, and home phone number whether on a social media site or blog. Once posted, most items cannot be removed.
• What may sound harmless to you, like sharing details about your birthday party (or your friend’s), showing pictures of gifts, and sharing vacation plans can provide enough detail  to a thief about your whereabouts, and expensive gifts, making your home an attractive target for a burglary.
• While it may be great to have more online friends than everyone else, always practice caution when accepting new friends into your network.  Just because they are virtual friends, doesn’t mean they can’t cause harm.
• Protect your information on social networking sites and restrict who can access your pages. Most social networking sites have strong privacy settings that you can customize. Learn how to use them.
• Don’t let your friends borrow your cell phone. Should they lose it, you and everyone in your contact list could be at risk for bogus texts (i.e. winning free things), unauthorized calls and charges, and even eavesdropping.
• Talk to your teen about why he/she should not give out personal financial information in response to phone calls from telemarketers or emails from unknown individuals or businesses.
• When your teen applies for his/her driver’s permit and license, make certain that the motor vehicle administration does not use Social Security numbers as the driver license identification number. If they do, ask for an alternative.
• Never, ever share your password with friends. They could share it with their friends, and so on. You do not want someone using your persona to speak with others or to post notes on other social networking sites.  You should also change your passwords frequently and be sure to use a strong combination of letters, numbers, and symbols so that nobody can easily guess it.
• Think before you tweet (Twitter), or post anything on Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube. Always assume that what you say, how you say it, and to who you say it will always be only a search away from friends, potential employers, stalkers, Internet predators, etc.

These tips will give you a starting point in impressing upon your teens the importance of identity protection, and maybe — just maybe — lay a foundation for them to be aware of their identity, where it goes, and what they can do to protect their credentials, their credit history, and themselves.

Related posts:

1. Identity Safety for Your Child
2. Why Black Friday Could Be a Red Carpet for Scammers
3. The IDGuardian Podcast: Episode #004 — Why Black Friday Could Be a Red Carpet for Scammers
4. When a Stranger Comes Calling: Why Social Networking Could Be Fueling a New Era of Digital Burglars
5. Social Networks Increase Risks to Online Privacy