Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian all offer account freezing for free. Take advantage of it! It is a great way to prevent someone from wrecking your credit
We can thank US Government for FORCING these companies to allow you to freeze your credit report. It used to be a state by state thing, else you had to pay them like $10 to freeze and unfreeze, unless you had PROOF that your identity was stolen.
Especially considering Equifax had that little “oopsy” (they already leaked all your personal info) 7 years ago, you should absolutely 100% freeze your credit report.
YES you have to unfreeze it when you’re needed to check your credit, but how often does that happen?
Honestly it’s a great excuse to turn down a pushy salesman as well. “Well I really wanna buy this car, but I have to unfreeze my credit report first and my info is at home, so I’ll be back.”
And do you REALLY need that 10th credit card for get that $10 coupon for Khols? Nah.
It’s a bit of work to set up, but once you set it up don’t forget you get a free credit report yearly from each bureau. So space them out every 4 months and then check them yearly.
Have you froze it recently though? They bury the fucking options and make it as painful as possible all while trying to sell you $20 a month monitoring services. Seriously equifax? Why would I PAY your backward, half assed company money to sell AND leak my data? What the christ!
I used McAfee.
Also make sure you register on the social security administration website and IRS…or someone else will do it for you.
Also, note on the SSA website, they will require you to login with 2FA email and will send you a slow ass code that takes 2-10i items to arrive. The rub is, if you copy the code with any standard method and paste it into their box, it copies an extra space character and pastes it, invisibly into the 2FA code box, which then fails. Took me a few weeks to work this out…they have a link to login support from the same page…wonder why they get issues?!? You have to type it in manually and only if you know this issue exists.
I opened a ticket with their IT for the good of the world…fuck the contractor who made that webpage.
I felt lots of stress on your behalf by just reading that ☠️
Why make this post if you’re not going to bother posting the links?
Experian
1-888-397-3742
Equifax
1-800-685-1111
www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/
TransUnion
(888) 909-8872
Related: YSK that if someone opens an account in your name or uses your credit cards without your permission, you’re not legally obligated to pay for those fraudulent debts or transactions. You can call the lender and tell them that it’s fraud.
SLPT: Get together with a friend and open accounts in eachothers name and use them for all your purchases. It’s basically free money.
And spend hundreds of hours fighting the collections they send after you regardless.
I had someone open a Verizon account with my info and I only found out when it showed up on my credit report as a collections account. Every single person there tried to tell me the account didn’t exist and there was nothing they could do. I even had one fuckin rep try to get me up open a new account so they could use it to look up the other account, because apparently sounded like a complete moron. I ended up reporting it to the secretary of state and wouldn’t you know Verizon found the account for them on the first try.
I did this when the Equifax breaches happened.
Freezing the accounts definitely had negative impacts on my credit score, despite having safe CC utilization and no debt. I saw about a 20 point dip from doing it.
Sure they claim it won’t have any effect but being safe is risky behavior to a business that relies on you being unsafe.
Does it seem unethical to anyone else that Experian reports credit scores and also has a service to boost your credit score? Like “pay us or else we’ll tell people you’re poor.”
I mean, the whole idea of credit scores in general is just a scam to keep poor people poor (and more specifically - in debt), and to create work for a new kind of companies - those standing between us and our “score” (which isn’t even measured consistently, but changes from agency to agency) and who we have to provide with access to our most personal and sensitive data to access (which they then sell on to add to their record profits).
It was an easier and quicker way to vet people for likelihood of paying money back. When it came to be, back in the 80’s, there was no good way to find out if a guy asking for a loan from a bank was likely to pay back a loan from the bank, so you have to already own valuable things like cars and houses and appraised art pieces and such that you could show the bank you owned that could be taken as collateral in exchange for the loan.
So I disagree with your premise, because even pre-credit you had to have a wealthy set of assets before you could get money on credit. At least now you can just show that you’ve kept up with paying bills and what-not in the reflection of your credit score. When I was in my early 20’s (like 20 years ago) all I owned was a $3,000 car and a crappy job, but I paid all my stuff on time every time and my credit scores were all over 750.
