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In my opinion, freezing your credit is more of a nuclear option. It’s a bit of a pain to unfreeze your credit for valid credit applications or simple credit lim
by xyst 3y ago
In my opinion, freezing your credit is more of a nuclear option. It’s a bit of a pain to unfreeze your credit for valid credit applications or simple credit limit increase requests.
Also I think freezing also prevents soft credit pulls so automatic credit limit increases won’t be given or add an extra hassle of “unfreezing” to get the increase.
What I do is use those “free” credit monitoring services (ie, credit karma, credit sesame) and monitoring provided by some of my credit cards to get full coverage across all credit bureaus.
If any unrecognized application for credit comes through using my information, then I will immediately get notifications.
Otherwise, I just continue as normal. Request CLIs for my current cards and grow my available credit.
- toast0 3y agoIt is a giant pain. But freezing doesn't seem to prevent soft pulls, at least, I still see them on my reports. However, in the past month, despite having frozen credit, someone managed to get a BofA checking account opened enough that I got emails about it, and had to spend a ton of time trying to get to the fraud department (I do have BofA credit cards, which I guess I should have gone through to get to fraud). They had already denied it, but sent me emails, I guess because of the existing accounts with that social. Additionally, my spouse recently got a Square debit card mailed to her, in the (inaccurate) name of a local business. Again, very difficult to get ahold of the fraud department. Of course, someone rented a luxury apartment in her name in Oakland a couple years ago, and Oakland PD still hasn't called back, and literally nobody else cares; the management was responsive, but said they weren't even sure that they could evict, given COVID; I just hope the rooftop espresso bar is nice for the fraudster.
- xerxesaa 3y agoWhat exactly is the pain of unfreezing? I was able to do it all online in a couple of minutes on each of the three major credit bureau sites.