Your child’s full name and date of birth are all someone needs to steal their identity. To shed light on this form of identity theft, law enforcement professional and former fraud supervisor Robert Chappell, Jr., explores the crime in his new book, Child Identity Theft: What Every Parent Needs to Know. Although more than 500,000 children become victims of identity theft each year—half of them under age 6—Chappell says the threat is one that parents must educate themselves about so they can teach their children how to protect their identity.

I spoke with Chappell about how to detect if a child’s identity has been compromised, creative ways identity thieves steal a child’s personal information, and why children are often a better target than adults. Read the Q&A and watch a Google Hangout with Chappell.