Protect Your Child Online

Identity fraud is not just used for financial scams as a fake birth certificate story shows. A recent story on MSNBC revealed the ease at which a 52-year-old man was able to use a fake birth certificate to attend a high school in Waterford, Connecticut.

It turned out that he was using the experience to write a book on the glaring flaws in our national security systems. If he could do it, how do we know if anyone is whom they say they are?

It’s every parent’s nightmare to think that institutions like the public school system are vulnerable to the threat that identity theft presents. While most of us worry about the threat identity theft poses to our credit rating, it must be acknowledged that there are far more valuable things in this world to protect.

Try a People Search–Don’t Get Lulled into Ambivalence

We assume that at a place such as a school there are strong security mechanisms to prevent someone with a fake birth certificate from getting a job (or certainly enrolling).

As parents we walk a fine line between overprotection and due diligence. Every parent remembers the first time our kid had a certain look that made us want to call a doctor in the middle of the night. Hopefully, there was nothing really wrong with the child, but it was still the right thing to do.

Investigate a Hunch with a Background Check

When you are a parent, you should get in the habit of playing a hunch. If your child’s teacher, coach or friends strike you as someone that could be posing a danger to your kid, you can’t rely on the school system to do their own research. It is definitely something that should change in our schools until that happens we, as parents, need to protect our own kids.

How You Can Request Criminal Records

Criminal records are a matter of public records, and you can request them in person at the courthouse responsible for records in your county. If you don’t have time to a visit in person, you can also obtain the same information online.

And it is a quick and inexpensive tool to give us some piece of mind in a crazy society. Lookup the suspected fake birth certificate and background check to see if the story makes sense.  You can search anyone you suspect as long as you have a first and last name.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under birth certificates . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.