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Freezing doesn't protect the information, but it does protect your credit account from being added to. Going to take the liberty of adding to this because the

Freezing doesn't protect the information, but it does protect your credit account from being added to. Going to take the liberty of adding to this because the imprecision might cause some people to develop a poor model of how financial institutions work: you don't have a "credit account." You have a few firms which have partial views of your "credit history", sourced by reports from some firms you've previously done business with before. What a freeze does is that those firms (CRAs) who could disclose your credit history to a bank will, instead, report to the bank "That file is frozen." How is this different from your mental model? Because credit decision is between a financial institution and a bank -- they don't have to ask anyone else's permission, including the CRA, to lend you money. They also don't have to "respect" a freeze on your file; it's purely advisory. It may deter _some_ banks from issuing you _some_ credit but it will likely not deter _all_ banks from issuing you _all_ credit products.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
I'm curious: say you freeze your credit and then take an action that should negatively affect your credit, e.g. skip out on paying a doctor. What happens? That's nearly identical to what a fraudster might do, except there is no fraudster. How does the system differentiate between someone showing up and doing something in your name vs you actually showing up and doing something negative?
- pwg 9y ago
  It works because nearly every institution that would "extend credit" relies on the reports from these agencies to decide to do so. So when they try to pull a report (for you or a fraudster) they get back "sorry, frozen" and that causes them to actually stop and try to actually verify the true identity of the person requesting the loan. If that is you (the proper owner) then you can 'unfreeze' for the purpose of obtaining the loan. If that is a fraudster, they will likely not have your pin's to do the unfreeze, so the bank/business says "no" to the request for money. [edit: spelling]
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    I suppose a doctor's office and the dentist are two of the rare exceptions. I can't think of any others. (They generally don't ask for payments till the end.)
- patio11 9y ago
  Freezing credit is not a write lock. It is a read pseudolock. Writes against the CRA succeed as normal.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

I'm curious: say you freeze your credit and then take an action that should negatively affect your credit, e.g. skip out on paying a doctor. What happens? That's nearly identical to what a fraudster might do, except there is no fraudster. How does the system differentiate between someone showing up and doing something in your name vs you actually showing up and doing something negative?

pwg 9y ago
It works because nearly every institution that would "extend credit" relies on the reports from these agencies to decide to do so. So when they try to pull a report (for you or a fraudster) they get back "sorry, frozen" and that causes them to actually stop and try to actually verify the true identity of the person requesting the loan. If that is you (the proper owner) then you can 'unfreeze' for the purpose of obtaining the loan. If that is a fraudster, they will likely not have your pin's to do the unfreeze, so the bank/business says "no" to the request for money. [edit: spelling]
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I suppose a doctor's office and the dentist are two of the rare exceptions. I can't think of any others. (They generally don't ask for payments till the end.)
patio11 9y ago
Freezing credit is not a write lock. It is a read pseudolock. Writes against the CRA succeed as normal.