I recommend freezing your credit

I recently had a discussion with a friend about credit freezes. This is information I wanted them to have in an easily-digestible format.

Introduction

If you live in the United States, various private companies maintain credit reports about you. These loosely form your credit score. Ignoring “should the system actually work this way” questions, I generally recommend freezing your credit reports on those private companies’ websites. It makes things a little less painful in the event of identity theft/fraud. And it’s free!

What are the side effects?

If you try to open a new line of credit (a credit card, a loan, etc.), the lender will try to “run your credit”: they’ll solicit your credit report from one of these companies. With frozen reports, that request will be denied. So you can either:

• Unfreeze all of your credit reports prior to applying for a new credit line, or
• Ask the lender which credit reporting firm they use, and unfreeze that report in advance, or
• Use a credit monitoring service, which will (hopefully) indicate to you which reporting firm denied the request, which you can then unfreeze (and ask the lender to try again)

I’m ready; how do I do this?

Each of these companies has a link to Freeze on their home page. Go to each one and enact a freeze. Some may make you create an account or store a PIN. Don’t lose either!

• Equifax
• Experian
• TransUnion
• Innovis
• ChexSystems (This one is generally used by banks for checking accounts, not credit cards)

This feels pathetic; is it?

Yep. Call your Congresspeople.