 TITLE: How to Teach Your Kids About Money and Credit CONTENT: Can a Child Have a Credit Report and Score?\n-------------------------------------------\nYour child could have a credit report and score if you added them as an authorized user to one of your credit card accounts. In that case, the credit bureaus will have received payment and balance information from your account, and as long as you made payments on time and kept your debt levels low, the information on your child's report will likely be positive.\nBut if you did not work to build your child's credit file, there's also a possibility that your child will have a credit report if they were a victim of identity theft. That means that a thief set up fraudulent addresses or bank accounts, or used the child's Social Security number and other personal information, to open up credit accounts in your child's name. When those financial accounts go unpaid, your child will be left with negative credit information before they've had the chance to make their own credit decisions.\nBut credit bureaus—including Experian—have safeguards in place in case a credit report has been requested on behalf of a minor (which could signal that a thief is trying to open a fraudulent account). Experian will alert the lender that the Social Security number associated with the credit report belongs to a minor to help keep the account from being opened. END