[sophie]

Today my 3 year old just got a credit card offer from Citi.I can't belive it, and are they still doing that? What should I do? I want to make sure that I protect her, and handle this the right way.Has this happened to anyone else?Help!

[Julie Vazquez]

WOW! That's just crazy. If a credit report exists for a 3-yr old, it's only because of fraud. In that case, the parent or legal guardian can freeze the child's credit. Here is more information.

[Patty Gale]

That is crazy! I remember when my oldest was a freshman in high school, he started getting credit card offers. I was furious. They gave him a $3,000 card limit. I called them repeatedly and told them they had better take his name off their mailing list or I was going to report them to the FTC. I couldn't believe it. Even though he had a part-time job, he didn't even make $3,000 a year, much less should have that in credit.

They eventually stopped sending him offers.

[TheCrediteer.com]

Getting something like that in the mail is always scary. In most cases like that where a minor receives a credit card offer in the mail, there is no credit report that exists or that was created. Companies buy and sell people's personal data to other companies, and what most likely happened in your case is that somehow your three-year-old's info was accidentally included when it shouldn't have been. As such, Citi's system automatically generated an offer letter and sent it.

I would definitely check into it to make sure there is no credit report of any kind, but most likely it was just due to an error where that data should not have been sent on to Citi.