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Protect Your Child's Identity: Signs of Stolen Information & How to Safeguard It
Jul 7, 2024
Alabama public school employees and students personal information
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good evening everyone Alabama Public
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School Employees and students personal
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information may have been compromised in
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a recent Cyber attack the state
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superintendent says it's not clear what
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information hackers accessed nor who was
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impacted but he warn Public School
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Employees and parents of students to
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assume their data has been compromised
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and to check their credit but what about
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your child's identity tonight nbc5's
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Andrea Ry reports on the signs you
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should look for and what to do to
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protect it when it comes to identity
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theft or the risk of identity theft
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children are a very good Target one
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reason it's not on parents radar so it
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can go unnoticed if a fraudster begins a
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line of credit or applies for a loan in
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your child's name using stolen
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information from a data breach the first
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thing that we always recommend is take a
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look at the credit file if no credit
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file exists that's a really good sign
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the second thing is you can always place
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a fraud alert or a credit freeze on a
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file that's already been created now we
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don't recommend creating a file one it
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doesn't exist just to freeze it it just
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leave it alone there but that's one of
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the early indicators Michael bremmer is
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Vice President of global data breach
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resolution and consumer protection and
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Experian one of the three credit bureaus
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he says unexpected mail addressed to
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your child like credit card offers is
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another sign your child's information
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has been stolen we see it happening more
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often and the problem is if there hasn't
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been any monitoring any attention to it
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if it's gone on for a while the longer
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it goes on the harder it is to unwind
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that's why he says to do everything you
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can to protect their social security
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number and avoid providing it like at
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the doctor's office if pressed ask
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questions like can I provide just the
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last four digits or can you use a
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different identifier the social security
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number is the diamond um in the jewelry
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case um it is used as the primary form
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of authentication in most places Andrea
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Ry NBC15 News now we put all of this
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consumer advice and additional ways to
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safeguard your data on our website you
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can find it all at my nbc15.com
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