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Freezing your credit sounds scary, but I do generally recommend looking into it. I froze my credit awhile back now, long before the Equifax breach, just as a p
by fpgaminer 8y ago
Freezing your credit sounds scary, but I do generally recommend looking into it. I froze my credit awhile back now, long before the Equifax breach, just as a proactive measure. Better to do it _before_ your identity gets stolen.
Since the freeze I've opened up a few lines of credit (loans, credit cards, etc). It's not that painful. Most of the time you just find out which credit bureau(s) they're going to pull from beforehand, do a temp unfreeze, and then submit your application like normal. It takes a few extra minutes of your time, but is otherwise not a bother.
There have been a few instances where the companies I was working with were just ... incompetent and didn't know who they were going to pull their reports from. Yeah ... but in those cases I just submitted the application and waited for the rejection letters to roll in, which state which company reported a 0 credit score :P
Is it as easy as before? No. But how often do you open lines of credit or bank accounts? Not often. And I don't think doing those things should be easy anyway. The huge plus here is that you don't have to worry about identity theft like everyone else. I've seen too many friends and family go through identity theft now. It's horrific, stressful, time consuming, and seemingly endless.
And on the bright side, I think having your credit frozen is becoming more and more common, which means companies are getting more used to dealing with people who have them. So the process is becoming more streamlined over time.
Now the caveats. Yes, it cost me money. It may still cost money even with this new law; as a fellow comment points out you may still have to pay whenever you need to temporarily unfreeze your credit. And yes, it's a racket. In many ways it feels like a shakedown. But such is life. People cheat you out of your money every day. This wasn't a mountain I was willing to die on.
- brational 8y agoDo you have kids? If so - do you freeze theirs too? (I'm considering doing so myself)
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIt would not hurt to do so.
- etrautmann 8y agoI froze my credit after the last breach. It then took me two extra painful weeks attempting to sign a lease when Experian's credit unlock did not work for me. The online form to unlock credit was inappropriately telling me my credit was unfrozen, which it was not, and my credit check was unable to run. I finally somehow found a similar but different credit unlock page with duplicate functionality that ended up working, but only after 5 unsuccessful attempts to unlock and the apartment rental company providing me the benefit of the doubt with five failed credit checks. This is too opaque and painful, and the companies in question are entirely at fault. Not sure what to do aside from raging into the void...
- throwaway76543 8y agoYou could just do nothing. That's what I'm doing. I care very little if someone defrauds some bank using my identity to open credit cards. I won't be paying for it. It's the bank's problem, not mine. I'm under no obligation to expend effort to maintain their security and datasets. The more you let this kind of thing be pushed into your lap, the more it will be.
- bdcravens 8y agoThat works as long as you don't need your credit for anything. This isn't limited to opening new lines of credit. Credit cards can be closed or have limits changed based on credit score. In most states, your car insurance rate can be based on your credit score; most policies renew every 6 months. In the event of a judgment against you for delinquent credit cards, your bank accounts can be levied. You're correct that this isn't your problem, and eventually you'll get your money back. You're wrong with idea that you can be passive and not get screwed.
- emodendroket 8y agoYeah, but you can be vigilant and still get screwed.
- 8y ago
- aphextron 8y agoI'd recommend just actively monitoring your credit before going overboard and freezing it. There's a bunch of different free credit report apps that will send you push notifications the moment anything changes, and things like credit pulls show up almost instantly now. I get notified immediately if anything changes on my report via text, email, and push.
- rpedela 8y agoFreezing it is relatively easy and you don't have to spend time monitoring. Monitoring also doesn't really prevent identify theft. In other words, better safe than sorry.
- pbreit 8y agoMonitoring is totally passive. "better safe than sorry" is a stifling maxim to live by.
- rpedela 8y agoI hope you are never sorry.
- sgc 8y agoAt the other extreme, YOLO is a stupid one. People buy insurance all the time. I bet you have some yourself. It seems odd to fight against such a simple thing as a credit freeze, and perhaps it is not as onerous to others as it appears to be to you.
- fpgaminer 8y agoThe problem is, once something gets on your credit report, it can often be a hassle to get it off. And the onus is completely on you to do so. You end up playing phone tag, potentially for years, with the firm that opened the fraudulent account, as well as all the reporting agencies. So personally I feel it better to prevent the whole thing to begin with. Also I'm not familiar with those free credit monitoring apps, but it seems like in all likelihood a "free" credit monitoring app is going to sell your data...
- zanmat0 8y agoI just did this and for Equifax and TransUnion, it was very easy, you just download the app and fill in some information. Experian looks like I will have to mail in a request with some documents.
- MatthewMcDonald 8y agoFYI this was a credit _lock_, and not a credit freeze > Unsurprisingly, the bureaus’ use of the term credit lock has confused many consumers; this was almost certainly by design. But here’s one basic fact consumers should keep in mind about these lock services: Unlike freezes, locks are not governed by any law, meaning that the credit bureaus can change the terms of these arrangements when and if it suits them to do so. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-let-the-ice-age-begin/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-...
- astura 8y agoPlus Equifax and TransUnion reports are rarely used, during credit applications Experian gets pulled ~75% of the time (I churn credit cards).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Frye9876 8y agoI just tried to freeze my credit on Equifax. At the end of the process I received a “one time pdf” with a pin to unfreeze. The pdf was garbled and illegible but there was a number to call if you couldn’t view it. I called the number and was told their system is down and to call back later. This feels more painful than getting my identity stolen.
- ams6110 8y agoIt only prevents identity theft used to open new lines of credit. Which seems to me like the least troublesome kind of identity theft. You can swear that you did not open that account, and it's up to the lender to prove that you did. Which they will not be able to do. On the other hand if your identity is stolen and your current lines of credit or bank accounts get drained, it's much more difficult to deal with because the money's gone, or there are a bunch of transactions you need to contest individually.