I’m considering doing a credit freeze with the three credit reporter companies. Apparently it’s easy to do but how much of a pain is it to undo? Is it worthwhile? Any thoughts or advice?
One quick suggestion. If you are interested in having a My Social Security account with the Social Security Administration so that you can check your information online, you should set it up before freezing your credit. A credit freeze or fraud alert will prevent you from setting up an account.
They all sent me a PIN and a phone number. Apparently all I have to do is call the phone number and give the PIN to unfreeze, but I have never done so, so I can’t tell you for sure it it’s that simple.
Equifax & Experian were easy, all online. Experian charged me $10, I think this varies by state. The others were free.
Transunion as I recall was a bit more hassle, they mail you a package and they only had an old address. Eventually I got a PIN in the mail similar to the others, in principle I can phone to unfreeze.
I also froze Innovis.
I think all credit freezes are supposed to be free now, as it should be. Without forcing it to be free:
- Equifax has all our data required to open a line of credit.
- Equifax gets hacked and now all our data is available to the public.
- Equifax now charges to protect/freeze your data.
Win-win for Equifax.
I did not know that. I tried to set mine up online a while back and I got a generic “you have to go into a SS office to do this” (I froze all the credit reports after Equifax fucked us over). I then got sad because the nearest office is over an hour away from me.
I was able to freeze and then unfreeze mine with surprisingly little hassle, with four reporting agencies. I did it all over the phone. The important thing is to make sure to hang on to the secret code numbers that you receive in the mail following the freeze.
You don’t hear much about the fourth agency, but they’re there. I’m at work and don’t recall the name, but I’ll check back in later.
NM, it’s in post #3
I froze my credit with all 4 agencies, oh, a year or two ago? Maybe a year.
Not too long after, I applied for a credit line increase, having forgot I did the freeze. The credit card company called me and said “Your credit is frozen. We need to check [whichever agency they use], so unfreeze that and call us back.” So I went to the website of the agency they said, followed the unfreeze instructions, set it to re-freeze in 48 hours. Called the credit card company back and they approved my credit line increase. I checked a few days later and my credit was re-frozen as I’d instructed.
The above scenario took like 30 minutes.
I highly recommend freezing your credit!
I froze all of mine during one of those data breaches a while back, the Equifax one I think. That was when everyone was doing it, and it was all kinds of fucked up. Freezing the other three was pretty easy, but the Equifax one took probably over a hundred tries, and then once it finally went through, it never gave me a PIN to unfreeze it so I have to write them a letter to get a passcode to unfreeze it. I was so pissed off at that point I just said FUCK IT it’s done. I’ve not had any need to unfreeze it since then, so I still haven’t written them the stupid letter. That’s probably going to fuck me sometime in the future, but FUCK Equifax. I’ll deal with those fucking assholes only when I have to.
Sorry for the rant.
There is the possibility my wife and I could live the rest of our lives without needing to unfreeze our credit ever. Future vehicles will be bought with cash. Any real estate will also be bought with cash. The only potential need to unfreeze is if we ever want to move to different credit cards. And yeah, fuck Equifax and the rest of them.