Parents do their best in teaching their children to not go anywhere with a stranger, but how many actually teach them to not share personal information with strangers?

Research shows that more than 500,000 children become victims of identity theft every year.  The most amazing fact is that almost half of these children are under the age of six. Practicing internet and cell phone safety can protect children from potential predators, but parents must also have a clear understanding of how mobile and internet child safety can also protect a child’s identity.

There is an alarming story on MSN.com about a teenage girl who was a victim of identity theft at age three. As a teenager, she now owed $750,000 for homes and automobiles an identity thief had purchased in her name.

An estimated one in every 40 households with young children has been impacted by identity theft. All a thief needs is a child’s full name and date of birth. As technology advances with smartphones and an increasing number of apps are available, we can do almost anything on our phones that we can do on our laptops or home computer. As people go to replace their old phones with smartphones, thieves are stealing the personal data left on them.

Social media is the easiest way to connect and keep in touch with friends and relatives. It has changed the way we do business and interact in our personal lives. Most people have at least one social media account that they use to regularly “check into” places, like entertainment venues and restaurants, and post photos and status updates. Children use social media as a primary form of communication to keep in touch with their friends in real time.

But can posting to social media and “checking in” to location-aware sites inadvertently be giving away information to people who might have bad intentions, making you or your children easy targets for fraud, crime or predators?

Did you know that children are being targeted for identity theft 35 times more often than adults? How about that 11.5 million

uKnowKids recently released a few cyberbullying statistics which were displayed through an infographic titled "The Truth About Cyberbullying". Our intention was to provide parents with some information and statistics from last year related to the growing issue of cyberbullying.

Thanks to Nancy Willard and a SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) taskforce we have noticed that one of the statistics was miscatorgized and thus misrepresented a very important statistic. The original inforgraphic claimed that 97% of middle school aged teenagers have been cyberbullied. The intended statistic should have shown that 97% of teens have access to the internet and according to the NCPC "Stop Cyberbullying Before It Starts" 43% of teens have experienced some sort of cyberbullying behavior online. 

The gaming giant Sony has been hacked twice in the last few months, compromising the identities and personal information of millions of users worldwide. Keep your kids safe: including their identities when they're online gaming. Even when users think their information is completely safe, it never truly is on the Internet.

The hackers first attacked between April 17 and 19, affecting 77 million PlayStation accounts. Personal information such as names, addresses, emails, birthdates, and PlayStation IDs, logins, and passwords were accessed. Credit card information could also have been stolen if the users gave it to the site.