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I recently had to unfreeze my credit, but I was traveling so I did not have the PIN that they gave to me when I froze my credit. Experian was fairly difficult
by karmelapple 9y ago
I recently had to unfreeze my credit, but I was traveling so I did not have the PIN that they gave to me when I froze my credit.
Experian was fairly difficult to do, and required I prove things in a pretty non-trivial way. It involved sending a fax, which was annoying, but not exactly horrible.
Equifax, the company that got hacked, let me unfreeze it discouragingly easily. They asked me some questions on the phone that I figure were likely available in the leaked data, with only one or two questions needing a little more access.
The two questions that needed more access were frightening to me, though. They asked me to confirm an up-to-the-minute balance on either my bank accounts or the cost of a few things I purchased very recently (I forget which it was). Either way, why do they have that data? Why does the company that got hacked have that? I certainly never gave them permissions to have it, and I would like to revoke their permission to have this information.
- colejohnson66 9y ago> I certainly never gave them permissions to have it, and I would like to revoke their permission to have this information. You probably agreed to it when you agreed to your bank’s TOS
- esrauch 9y agoIs there any major bank that doesn't have terms that allow invasive data sharing with arbitrary third parties?
- votepaunchy 9y agoThere was a recent Planet Money on the origin of the credit reporting agencies and the idea has always been to have a bidirectional flow of customer data. If a bank wants to opt out of contributing customer data they would also have no visibility into credit worthiness when making loans.
- CWuestefeld 9y agoEquifax, the company that got hacked, let me unfreeze it discouragingly easily My wife and I just went through this due to a recent identity theft incident. Our experience in setting up a freeze with Equifax was the opposite of ours. My wife (and she's the financial manager of the house!) actually got refused by their online tool, and we had to call up and go through it all again with a human.
- pzxc 9y agoThe fact that you had difficulty freezing your credit, and the person your replied to found it discouragingly easy to UN-freeze their credit, does not bode well for Equifax in either case.
- karmelapple 9y agoSame here. Should have mentioned that both freezing and unfreezing ended up needing to be done over the phone.
- Rebelgecko 9y agoDoesn't that data go into your credit score?
- ghiur 9y agoDo you mean your credit card balance, or do you actually mean your bank account (=checking/savings) balance? Big difference. I certainly hope they only have the former.
- karmelapple 9y agoGood question, and I don't entirely remember.
- AdamJacobMuller 9y agoWhat Bank?