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I strongly encourage anyone in the US to put a full credit security freeze on all three credit agencies. When a credit freeze is in place, you still have acces
by courtewing 9y ago
I strongly encourage anyone in the US to put a full credit security freeze on all three credit agencies. When a credit freeze is in place, you still have access to all of your existing loan accounts and whatnot (e.g. credit cards), but lenders cannot access your credit to open new accounts unless you want them to.
It's not difficult nor expensive to do, and the freeze lasts until you decide to revoke it. Whenever you need to allow access to your credit (credit check for rent, taking out a loan, etc), you can temporarily lift your credit freeze for a small fee. The fees associated with this are going to be much cheaper than any of the professional "identify protection" services that exist out there, and the freeze is significantly more effective at protecting you.
When a company leaks your social security number and personal details, which almost certainly will happen at some point if it hasn't already, then opening fraudulent accounts in your name isn't the only risk you face, but it's an obvious and dangerous possibility that can ruin you financially or make you spend a considerable amount of time and energy fixing the situation.
For every person in the US with kids, I also strongly suggest that you freeze their credit as well. There's no good reason for your 13 year old to take out a loan, but identity thieves don't care about how old their victim is.
- bognition 9y agoYou've sold me, now tell me how to do it
- courtewing 9y agoYou have to place the freeze on each of the three credit agencies individually. In most states it's $10 each, but it can vary state to state. https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo... https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze/place-credit-freeze https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze/place-credit-freeze https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
- rcoder 9y ago/me sighs The Equifax site appears broken in at least some browsers. Transunion wants me to sign up for an online account, and Experian charges a $10 fee in my state to place a freeze. All three want to collect my name, DOB, SSN, etc. _again_ in order to sign up. This is complete and utter BS. Credit reporting agencies are one of the greatest/worst rackets in the modern financial system.
- leggomylibro 9y ago"You could be at GRAVE RISK because we accidentally leaked your personal information. Please give us all of your personal information so that we can tell you if you were affected." It's almost funny, in a way. What, so I can become affected if I'm not already?
- cjhanks 9y agoI don't understand this. Equifax claims they just leaked my SSN, Drivers License, and other pertinent data to everybody. How would they possibly confirm that I am the one lifting the 'freeze'?
- krn1p4n1c 9y agoWhen you get your account frozen they provide a PIN to unlock.
- hughes 9y agoAnd what happens if I call to unfreeze but have lost the PIN? Can I never get a loan again for the rest of my life? Or is there some way around the PIN - perhaps only requiring the already leaked information?
- sjg007 9y agoYou call them up... but this will probably no longer work b/c of the data breach. Otherwise you snail mail them a letter with a govt ID and they send you a new pin.
- cdubzzz 9y agoI recently did this and highly recommend IdentityTheft.gov for assistance. It has tons of great resources/guidance for dealing with identity theft and other credit issues. https://www.identitytheft.gov/ https://www.identitytheft.gov/
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThis will make a great addition to the /r/personalfinance wiki! Thanks for posting it!
- cdubzzz 9y agoHappy to help! I was really surprised how well the site works. A bit more about my experience here in case it could also be useful (though the post is admittedly a bit scatter brained): https://chrxs.net/articles/2017/03/23/responding-to-identity-theft/ https://chrxs.net/articles/2017/03/23/responding-to-identity...
- MichaelApproved 9y agoclickable links. The subreddit https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance The wiki https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index
- welder 9y agoDirect link to phone numbers for security freeze: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
- elipsey 9y agoAnyone know if there's a way to get your free credit report if you can't answer the questions for the free one? The computer says no, and the phone number just sends a letter that says no. I tried to to buy one from my bank, but as far as I can tell they only sell subscriptions...
- maxerickson 9y agoYou could see if Credit Karma works. I think it is mostly a free interface to Trans Union though.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoFunny enough, it also provides your Equifax report.
- cbhl 9y agoEach of the credit reporting agencies has a process for requesting your credit report by snail mail. The form is hidden away on the various websites, but it has generally worked for me when the online form didn't work (it turns out another person's delinquent loans and CCs were in the report that they were using to test that it was me). Not as free, since you need to buy envelopes / print the forms / photocopy your ID / get stamps / wait X weeks, but as free as it gets when the online system doesn't work.
- hello_newman 9y agothere is! https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ i use it every year along with being a regular credit karma user.
- kingnothing 9y agocredit karma
- jlgaddis 9y agohttp://annualcreditreport.com/ http://annualcreditreport.com/ is the "official" site for this, per the FTC [0]. There's info on that page on how to proceed to get yours via snail mail (along with a link to the form). [0]: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-reports https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-repor...
- yclept 9y agoDilemma: spend $30 on credit freezes or put $30 into bitcoins?
- mcshicks 9y agoI can't agree with this more. I was the victim of identity theft many years ago. I my case the data leaked from an employee at my company's payroll dept! There was nothing I could have done to prevent it. Anyway I did this many years ago and have not worried about it since. There is some small hassle because people run credit checks for weird reasons that have nothing to do with trying to get a loan or line of credit. For instance when I got promoted to a certain level at my last company they ran one, and while they didn't run them when I got hired, I think later they started doing them as part of "background checks" for all new hires. The other hassle is sometimes the credit agencies change the way you "unfreeze" and I've had some problems with that, or the people running the check don't actually know which of the three credit agencies they are using. However for the once every four or five years hassle it is definitely worth the piece of mind for me. In many cases you can "temporarily" revoke it for a week or 10 days.
- __jal 9y agoI'd phrase this more as, "I was impersonated by someone, and a third-party compounded the problem by lying about it to others. Now, to avoid that problem, I pay protection money to that third-party and waste my time jumping through their hoops." I do the same thing, BTW, because the alternative is worse. But it is a protection racket offered by the very people causing the problem.
- mcshicks 9y agoI think that pretty much is exactly how I felt about it at the time. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the fact that this "remedy" was actually a requirement imposed (at least in California) on the credit agencies by the government, and it wasn't always that way. So for several years instead of this, I would have to actually go check (all three) credit agencies getting my "free" report (since I was an identity theft victim). Of course I still had to ask for it, they didn't just send it to me. So yes it was the least bad alternative. If a large enough people actually signed up for this it would actually destroy the credit agencies business model, because instead of working by default, they would be broken often enough that people would do other, more reliable solutions. I think they may already be happening in some cases. For instance when my son moved into his first apartment, I had to put my name on the lease. I told them my credit was locked and they said they don't use the credit agencies, they had some other check they did. So yeah, no love for credit reporting agencies from me..
- Y7ZCQtNo39 9y agoSo if an identity thief has enough of my information to potentially open a new line of credit, wouldn't they also have enough information to reverse the freeze? In other words, is a freeze enough to stop new accounts from being created?
- mcshicks 9y agoYou get a unique long pin code when you freeze the account. You need that to unfreeze it. There is some "recovery" procedure, I think you need a notary or something
- cespare 9y agoAnd that unique long pin definitely isn't stored in plaintext in the next column over in their database, right?
- gruez 9y ago"don't worry, your 12 digit pin is securely encrypted with md5" /s
- seanp2k2 9y agomd5? They use triple ROT13.
- roywiggins 9y agoAt least it's only in one database, and not all of them, like SSNs are...
- ianai 9y agoAt this point it's about doing that one thing the other 1 million won't. It might be surmountable but do you figure the adversary is going to have the incentive to surmount it?
- cm2187 9y agoAt this stage, if you have to pay the company that leaks your own data to prevent it from harming you, it starts to sound like protection racket.
- fweespeech 9y agoIt is a protection racket that shifts the risks and costs from the financial system to consumers.
- cjsuk 9y agoSame with chip and pin here in the UK
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI have heard of no cases where liability has been shifted in that way.
- mannykannot 9y agoThere is strong evidence for it here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland14chipandskim.pdf http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland14chipandskim.... And regardless of whether you claim the evidence is inconclusive, it is simply not acceptable to dismiss a known vulnerability in something important by saying "I don't know of any case where it has been exploited yet."
- cjsuk 9y agoExactly. All it does as far as I can see is flag the transaction as card holder present. The PIN is easy to steal as well evidenced by the number of fake reader heads and cameras found attached to ATMs as well.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoThat's explicitly not what I said. I know that flaws have and will continue to be discovered in those authentication systems, and also that a theoretical shift in liability occurs. Any bugs will need to be fixed, and that's important. But you can't ignore the situation in practice – liability is not being shifted, and all UK banks and credit card providers are pretty happy to refund fraudulent transactions regardless.
- anigbrowl 9y agoWhy not just shift the presumption of liability (absent verification) to the financial institution instead of the consumer? Loan issuers can hire skilled professionals to do credit verification, so why should consumers bear the risk for their lack of due diligence?
- ohazi 9y ago"just" Consumers would love this. Financial institutions would not. Guess who wins this battle?
- anigbrowl 9y agoFor sure, and that's precisely the problem.
- pwg 9y ago> Consumers would love this. Financial institutions would not. Guess who wins this battle? And everyone thought SOPA and PIPA were done deals, that is until the great internet SOPA/PIPA blackout day that resulted in so many calls to congress that the congress critters backed down. If enough voters could be motivated appropriately to contact their congress critters requesting jail time for the Equifax executive staff that clearly did not stress security sufficiently, there would be some change that would occur. Remember, money (donors) only help the congress critters to pay for the costs of the election. They still have to get those voters to actually vote for them. So there's still a way to influence their viewpoint. It just takes _way_ more than a few handfuls of voters calling/writing to reach the point where they actually pay attention anymore.
- chaostheory 9y agoCalling a phone number is easier than signing up by web https://www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resource/important- https://www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resource/important- contacts
- nkcmr 9y agoWow. Equifax's Credit Freeze line is just dead. Must be getting slammed right now.
- Thriptic 9y agoTheir signup process for the credit freeze involves entering your SSN which is not obscured at all. It's increasingly obvious how this could have happened -_-
- msumpter 9y agoAlso just tried to pull a credit report for Equifax via annualcreditreport.com and received a messages a condition exists at this time not allowing my report to be pulled and instead gave me mailing instructions.
- 8ytecoder 9y agoQuestion for you: My card comes with Identity theft protection [1]. Do you think that's a good alternative to freezing credit completely? [1] https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/member-benefits/security/protection-solutions/identity-theft-protection.html https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/member-benefits/securi...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gricardo99 9y agoIt sounds like this would alert you to potential fraud, but not prevent it from happening. You'd still have the headache of undoing the damage, although that may be easier if you find out sooner. If you freeze your credit, it basically prevents anyone from opening any new credit under your name. The reason for this is that any lender (car, mortgage, credit card, etc...) first would want to see your credit history, to determine how credit worthy you are. If they can't do that, they will not lend. I'm waiting for the headline one day soon that hackers were able to unfreeze people's profiles and commit fraud under these accounts anyway. It's just another database entry somewhere, which says "freeze". All these systems are vulnerable and can be penetrated.
- bubblethink 9y agoThat's a bad idea I think. You are giving your card company proxy rights, and more data about yourself then they should have.
- Osmium 9y agoDoes a credit freeze stop you from accessing your free credit scores (e.g. CreditKarma, Mint etc.)?
- CapnCrunchie 9y agoNo it won't prevent you from accessing your free credit scores.
- interlocutor 9y agoThis is actually a major inconvenience. You won't be able to apply for credit cards or get a loan to buy a car if you have a credit freeze. You have to unfreeze and re-freeze each time you apply for a credit card, and this costs about $30.
- __jal 9y agoHow often to you apply for credit? It is, in any case, far less of an inconvenience than not paying the protection racket, having someone impersonate you, and having the credit oligopoly lie about you because of it, leaving you to somehow clean up their mess.
- praneshp 9y agoSome folks churn, so they apply for credit several times a month. It's not a very small niche community either.
- gricardo99 9y agoIt depends on your situation. I've done this for the last 3 years, and have only had to lift the freeze a 2 times, both times actually for job offers (it's pretty routine for companies to run background checks on new hires, which includes a credit history check). It does cost ~$30, but can be done online, and takes little time. You can also reduce the cost by asking whoever wants to legitimately check on your credit history, which reporting agency they will be checking with. Then you only need to lift the freeze for that agency, and for that entity asking for a report. If there isn't some handshake/ack mechanism like this, I'm not sure how you cut back on fraudulent activity. I can see the case for making the credit agencies eat this cost and provide these services for free. That would probably require an act of congress... Edit: You could also ask a potential employer to eat the cost of unfreezing to check your credit history, or ask them not to do the check at all (especially if it's not really relevant to your job). Either request seems reasonable to me, although I haven't tried that, I'm betting at least most employers would pay for the unfreeze.
- sgs1370 9y agoI did this about 2 years ago with all 3 of the major agencies and in addition to the benefits described in post and comments, my junk mail volume dropped considerably. I don't know if it's always the case but this did not cost me any money.
- raquo 9y agoSounds like such a freeze should be the default state.
- dasil003 9y agoThat doesn't sound very profitable.
- bitbang 9y agoI did this about 8 years ago, and have only needed to temporally unfreeze it 3 times. Besides the big 3, I also froze reporting from Innovis. The only unforeseen hangup from frozen credit reporting I've run into is with car rentals. With a few exceptions, most car rental companies (at least in the US) run your credit. Everything else was pretty predictable.
- jonahx 9y agoCan you call and it get it unfrozen immediately if it needs to be run?
- khalilravanna 9y agoTo unfreeze it entirely it looks like it can take no longer than 3 days. Unfreezing it for specific parties it sounds like is less money and perhaps takes less time but that will depend on the company. Source: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
- bitbang 9y agoLaw limits it to no more than three days. My experience has been that it mostly takes place within 12-24 hours.
- iiiggglll 9y ago> Besides the big 3, I also froze reporting from Innovis. Why Innovis? Who typically uses their reports?
- bitbang 9y agoSame people that pull from the other 3. It's not as commonly used, though its usage is trending upwards from what I understand.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoDo they refuse you rental? Here in UK they verify address via utility bills, cross-check with drivers license (verified by gov agency, DVLA). They maybe only take card payments too, no cash? I'd expect that to be enough, given they force you to take out expensive insurance, that must cover them, surely. What's the credit report going to get them at that point? (It may be even stricter now, don't know.)
- tempestn 9y agoUnfortunately it appears freezing credit reporting is impossible in Canada, presumably because there are no laws forcing these companies to allow it here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/54677 https://money.stackexchange.com/a/54677
- mediocrejoker 9y agoWhat stops the would-be identity thief from removing the freeze before opening a fraudulent account?
- skylark 9y agoA credit freeze gives you a PIN that they'll ask for before the freeze can be lifted.