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I froze my credit for free in response to the Equifax breach, and it gave me a little more piece of mind. However, I just had the experience of thawing my credi

I froze my credit for free in response to the Equifax breach, and it gave me a little more piece of mind. However, I just had the experience of thawing my credit and I discovered that the companies are back to charging you for the freeze. I had the pins for all the thaws and they went relatively smoothly, except for Equifax, who required me to call and answer ridiculous questions about banking I did over a decade ago (and suggested I would always have to do this regardless of the fact that I had my pin and an account). I shudder to think what would happen if I lost my pin numbers. Especially if I didn't realize until right before I needed a credit check.

stillhere 9y ago
We should never forget that Equifax first tried to charge consumers for a freeze until consumers complained so loudly that they were forced to give it for free. They clearly have no respect for their consumers and show/flaunt it. Legislators have failed to deal with this issue in a modern way. We need to assume that every American is compromised and freeze accounts by default.
lostapathy 9y ago
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that. Surely, given the recent breaches, a lot more people are freezing accounts who are less accustomed than the average HN reader to keeping pins or other security identifiers around long-term. Once those people need to start unfreezing accounts, we're either going to have a mess because they can't, or a mess because it turns out unfreezing isn't that well protected either. Either way, gonna be ugly.