I recently received a letter from a company about a data breach.

The letter stated that the company had been the victim of a cyberattack in March that had corrupted files (known as ransomware). The attacker had also gained access to sensitive files and customer health data.

Unfortunately, this is pretty common these days. This time, however, it wasn’t my own data that was stolen. It was my 9-year-old daughter’s health data, from a breach at the medical company that supplies her wheelchair.

She didn’t enter her details on a phishing site. She didn’t download malware. She doesn’t even have an email account. Yet her details were already stolen.

The data includes her name, date of birth, social security number, medical records, insurance information and more.

And this isn’t the first time. Her information had already been stolen three times before she was 10^and birthday.

There is nothing we could have done differently in this situation. If you stop using a service, you can ask the organization to delete your personal information. However, in the case of medical companies, which have access to your most sensitive data, you cannot simply switch providers and they often have to keep your data for longer to meet compliance requirements.

However, there are things you can do to prevent identity theft in general, even after your children’s information has been exposed in such a breach.

How to Protect Your Kids from Identity Theft

• Freeze your child’s credit report: You must do this with all three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and Transunion) and it is free. Freezing restricts access to your child’s credit report and means that fraudsters cannot use your child’s identity to get credit.

• Use fake data where possible: In some places, like medical facilities, you have to use your child’s real information. But when you’re signing up for something less official, try using dummy information.

• Check the privacy settings of the apps your children use: Keep things as private as you can. For example, don’t use their picture for profile pictures, remove statuses that let others know when they’re online, set as much as possible to ‘private’, and give as little personally identifiable information as possible (e.g. home address, phone number, etc.).

• Take advantage of their digital assets: Buy their domain name, set up emails for them, and sign up for major platforms. Then lock down all of these accounts with strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication, and set them to private or inactive.

• Keep your devices up to date and use them security software: Infostealers are a type of malware that steals data from your device. This data can then be sold on the dark web to identity thieves.

• Talk to your kids about digital safety: Make sure they know how to set strong passwords, what dangers to watch out for online, and how to stay safe.

• To set up identity monitoring: This will notify you if your data or that of your family is being traded online, so you can repair the damage later.

We don’t just report threats, we help you protect your entire digital identity.and

Cybersecurity risks should never go beyond a headline. Protect your personal information and that of your family by using identity protection.