Your credit is a valuable resource. Good credit can help you save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on all sorts of purchases. Monitoring your credit report is a healthy habit that can aid in spotting early signs of identity theft and negotiating the best deals.

Security experts recently uncovered a new and very sinister twist on identity theft – businesses actively selling the Social Security numbers of children to buyers with bad credit scores, who dump the stolen identities as soon as they’re no longer of use, then purchase more.