Why Freezing Your Credit Is One of the Simplest Ways to Protect Yourself

Freezing your credit is one of the best ways to prevent fraudsters from opening fake accounts in your name.

Almost a decade ago I received a bill from Best Buy about a laptop that was purchased on a recently opened Best Buy credit card. My first thought was, “What, is this?”. As I realized what happened I just got very frustrated and angry. I didn’t want to deal with this and I shouldn’t have to. But I do have to because it happened. 

I called up Best Buy, anxious and afraid that I would get stuck with the bill. There were several steps to the process, including filing a police report, but overall, the process was easy and it was resolved without any issues.

After that I froze my credit with the major credit reporting agencies, and I haven’t had issues since. 

Ok, so what does a credit freeze actually do?

A credit freeze prevents new credit accounts from being opened using your Social Security number without your approval.

Once you freeze your credit, a few things happen.

• Lenders can’t access your credit report to open new accounts; and
• Scammers are blocked from opening loans or credit cards in your name

If you ever need to take out a loan or get a new credit card, you have to go through the extra hoop of temporarily unfreezing your credit at one of the agencies. It’s a hoop I would rather jump through than having to deal with someone taking out debt in my name though. 

A credit Freeze won’t solve the whole problem.

You are still going to be exposed in these areas:

• It won’t protect you if someone steals your credit card number.
• It won’t stop your data from getting stolen in a data breach.

A “fun” website you can check is here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Plug in your email address and it will tell you all the data breaches it has been affected by. If you see you have been affected by a data breach, the best way to protect yourself is by changing your passwords.

OK, so should you freeze your credit?

I say yes, because the hassle factor is far less stressful to me than someone opening an account in my name. You will need to decide which is more stressful for you. 

You can always unfreeze your credit when you need to buy a car, a house, or open a credit card. Most companies aren’t going to check your credit with more than one agency, so you will only need to temporarily unfreeze one agency at a time. They can tell you which one they will use to check your credit. 

So, you’re are ready to Freeze your credit now.

My biggest wish is that they made the process simpler and faster. For now, you will need to freeze your credit separately with each of the three major credit bureaus. They are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. 

• Visit each companies credit freeze page online
• Create or log in to an account
• Request a security freeze

See the links below:

https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/

https://www.experian.com/help/credit-freeze/

https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

The freeze itself is free and does not expire.  You can log back in to temporarily remove a freeze. They may try to upsell you  on other services, just remember that these are not related to the freeze and the freeze itself is free.