There are no comprehensive studies tracking the number of children with stolen identities or adults whose identities were stolen as children, but the Federal Trade Commission reports that 10,835 identity theft complaints were reported on behalf of victims under the age 18 in 2006, up from 6,512 identity theft complaints filed on behalf of the same age group in 2003. A report by Debix Identity Protection Services, a credit monitoring service, also suggests child ID crimes are on the rise, with 5 percent of 500 children showing proof of tampered identity. "It's not a nationally representative study, but the numbers are holding true," says Julie Fergerson, vice president of emerging technology at Debix and a board member of the Identity Theft Resource Center. Most victims won't learn of the problem until they are old enough to apply for their own credit cards, she says, making the security breaches hard to track.

"It's a new crime, and the kids haven't turned 18 yet en masse so we can't know the total impact," says Fergerson. With teens potentially giving away too much personal information via popular social networking sites and blogs such as Facebook and MySpace; with unscrupulous parents, uncles and aunts "borrowing" a child's Social Security number and birth records to open up a telephone line or perhaps a department store card; and with school systems, sports teams and mentorship groups asking for copies of sensitive information documents, the opportunity for identity theft is doubling, say these experts.

"What we see most often is someone close to the child. They tend to justify it saying, 'we need it for the child,'" says Terry. "Then it seems to expand from there. We see that quite a bit, where one parent does victimize their own children. We see it quite often with caregivers like foster parents, unfortunately."