How to be cybersmart – that’s an important topic. On February 7, Australians have the opportunity to raise awareness as to how children and parents alike can be smart on the internet. This is essential for many reasons, one of which is to preserve our personal information, our financial identities and our clear credit file. Cyber-smart are hosting ‘Safer Internet Day’ with this year’s theme, ‘connecting generations and educating each other’, focusing on promoting a dialogue on online safety amongst all generations.

By Graham Doessel, Founder and CEO of MyCRA Credit Repairs and www.fixmybadcredit.com.au.

Cybersmart’s key messages for schools, libraries and families this Safer Internet Day are:
•Talk about online safety—with all members of your family and school community
•Protect Your Privacy—check your privacy settings and update your software
•Educate yourself about the online world—check out the Cybersmart resources.

How can a young person’s clear credit file be put at risk from their internet use?

Our young people need to be cyber-smart and also, young people need to be credit-savvy to get along in this modern world.

One issue we wish to highlight to help young people stay smart online is for them to be aware of the ways in which they can be putting their clear credit file at risk every time they post information publicly on the internet, even before they are credit-active.

It’s unfortunate that teenagers in Australia today are not immune to identity fraud. Even though they are not yet 18, the personal information that is made public today could be used against them in the future.

Many teenagers do not know the risks of having a public ‘profile’ on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but fraudsters do. With the volume of personal information that is publicly available about our young people on social network sites, what’s to say fraudsters can’t pull that information and use it to build a profile that could allow them to create a fake identity?

A young person who becomes the vicitm of identity theft could have their clear credit file ruined for five years. They may not even get a chance to get a mobile phone or take out a credit card themselves.

Late last year, the Australian Federal Police’s national co-ordinator of identity security strike team, Ben McQuillan spoke about the dangers of identity crime at a forum on money laundering and terrorism.

He warned forum listeners about the new trend of ‘data warehousing’ which involves storing data for a time, making it harder for a victim or bank to trace where and when the data was stolen.

”If people know your full name, your date of birth, where you went to school and other lifestyle issues, and they were to warehouse that data, there is a prospect that could then be used to take out loans or credit cards or to create a bank account that could then be used to launder money,” Mr McQuillan told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Identity theft  is not only about the initial loss of monies, but if the fraud amounts to credit accounts in the young victim’s name going undetected and unpaid past 60 days, creditors will issue defaults. It need not be major fraud to have a detrimental effect to the young person’s clear credit file. Credit file defaults for as little as $100 can stop someone from being able to obtain credit. So any misuse of someone’s credit file can be extremely significant.

Repairing bad credit, even following identity theft is not easy. The onus is on the victim to prove to creditors they didn’t initiate the credit. The fact that the perpetrator is long gone and the actual act of identity theft happened years earlier will only add to the difficulty for the young person in recovering their clear credit file.

Experts recommend parents and young people continue to update their skills on how to be cyber-smart.

The government’s ‘stay smart online’ website offers some top tips about using the internet which can be discussed with young people at home and school:

Top tips

Make sure your computer is secure—follow the advice in the Secure your computer section of this