Switching or starting a new utility service or phone line, including a cell phone.Applying for any type of loan, mortgage, or credit card.Under Federal law and Massachusetts law you cannot be charged to place, lift, or remove a credit freeze.Ī credit freeze also stops businesses from checking your credit, so you may need to temporarily lift your credit freeze before: Each freeze remains until you lift or remove it. Placing a credit freeze with each of the three major agencies, Equifax, Transunion, and Experian, offers the most protection. A credit freeze is perhaps the most effective way of stopping identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name. "Enemy nation states build databases of Americans that they then use to get to their targets, for example a network operator at a power grid, or a defense contractor at a missile defense company.A credit freeze, also called a security freeze, prevents a credit reporting agency from releasing your credit report to others, without affecting your credit score. "Cyberwar is in large part conducted through data mining and cyber-intelligence," said Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner. The credit freeze, however, will not protect you from potentially even more nefarious end users of this treasure trove of information on nearly half of all Americans. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback as we continue to improve this process." "These are helping to further inform our actions, and we are now sharing regular updates on this website. "We are listening to issues consumers have experienced and their suggestions," the company said on a website it created to post updates on the hack and to detail how it is addressing the issue. Not very secure.īut the company says it's learning as it goes along, and working quickly to make changes. And, most interestingly, instead of randomly generated PINs, early PIN codes appeared to be simply the date and time you applied for a PIN. Others said the automated freezing line wasn't working. Equifax customers reported reaching call center employees who didn't know what a "credit freeze" was. Since the announcement of the hack and even up to now there have been problems with the freezes. It can also put a crimp in those spur-of-the-moment store credit offers where you get a percentage off your purchase for signing up on the spot. But it's also somewhat of a hassle - so if you're shopping for a car or house, you'll want to leave the freeze off for a while. The Disadvantagesįreezing your credit is a great way to stop thieves or computer errors from messing up your credit history. The FTC has more info on how credit freezes work as well. After you thaw the report and are done with the transaction, you call the credit bureau back and put the freeze back on. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. To thaw it, you can call a phone number (Equifax's automated freeze lift line is 1-80) and give them the PIN along with either the date range you wanted the freeze lifted, or the name of the company you'd like to be given access to your report. This means that any time you or any other entity - legitimate or otherwise - tries to check your credit and open up a new line of credit, you'll need to first "thaw" your credit report.
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