Jer
07-30-2019, 12:26
There's another thread regarding the recent Equifax Data Breach Settlement (https://www.ar-15.co/threads/174938-Equifax-Data-Breach-Settlement?p=2227810#post2227810) which reminds me of a similar topic. I thought everyone could benefit from but I didn't want to derail that thread so I decided this was worthy of it's own topic.
Freezing your credit report will prevent anyone from viewing your credit history or pulling a report. This doesn't keep your credit score from going up or down but it prevents others from viewing it. This is critical for opening new lines of credit or account making it virtually impossible for someone to steal your identity. They would need to unfreeze your credit which requires a lot of next-level info that likely only you have. That's the whole point.
If you're doing your part to keep from getting into debt you won't need this wide-open anyway. In the rare instance in which you need to use it you can either unfreeze temporarily or entirely for free.
It's free to freeze your credit with all three bureaus: Equifax, Experian & TransUnion.
One of the few good things the federal government has done is to require each of the three to freeze your credit within 24 hours (if done online, 3 days if done via snail mail) and unfreeze within 1 hour upon your request. Take advantage of this. It takes a few minutes to do all three and will bring a significant amount of peace of mind for no money at all. Great ROI.
1) Equifax
https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/
Find the "freeze" option and click "Get Started" then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
2) Experian
https://www.experian.com/help/
Find the "freeze" option & then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
3) TransUnion
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
Find "Freeze my Credit" option & then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
Just make sure to do the "freeze" option as this is free. They may try to convince you to "Lock" or "Monitor" your credit report but those will be pay services. Once you Freeze it though the value in monitoring goes down substantially.
Freezing your credit report will prevent anyone from viewing your credit history or pulling a report. This doesn't keep your credit score from going up or down but it prevents others from viewing it. This is critical for opening new lines of credit or account making it virtually impossible for someone to steal your identity. They would need to unfreeze your credit which requires a lot of next-level info that likely only you have. That's the whole point.
If you're doing your part to keep from getting into debt you won't need this wide-open anyway. In the rare instance in which you need to use it you can either unfreeze temporarily or entirely for free.
It's free to freeze your credit with all three bureaus: Equifax, Experian & TransUnion.
One of the few good things the federal government has done is to require each of the three to freeze your credit within 24 hours (if done online, 3 days if done via snail mail) and unfreeze within 1 hour upon your request. Take advantage of this. It takes a few minutes to do all three and will bring a significant amount of peace of mind for no money at all. Great ROI.
1) Equifax
https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/
Find the "freeze" option and click "Get Started" then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
2) Experian
https://www.experian.com/help/
Find the "freeze" option & then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
3) TransUnion
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
Find "Freeze my Credit" option & then follow prompts to create an account and activate credit freeze.
Just make sure to do the "freeze" option as this is free. They may try to convince you to "Lock" or "Monitor" your credit report but those will be pay services. Once you Freeze it though the value in monitoring goes down substantially.