For the first time in forever, I have frozen all of my credit reports at the three major credit bureaus (Equifax Freeze, Experian Freeze, TransUnion Freeze). The balance between the guaranteed hassle of maintaining a credit freeze and the potential hassle of dealing with an identity theft attempt has finally shifted enough towards just having them frozen as a default position.
Luckily, it has become even easier than I remembered. These days, you no longer need to call in or provide a special PIN to unfreeze your credit reports. You can freeze and thaw your credit reports using an online account at each bureau (secured by text 2FA) within minutes, and set the thaw to only last just a day or week. I like that it will automatically re-freeze your report. Just make sure you have a good password manager.
The most annoying bureau was probably Experian, which always seems to ask for an upsell to their paid monitoring service at every login attempt, and also suggests their “CreditLock” service when you try to add a freeze – a paid service which I bet tricks a certain percentage of visitors. Credit Freezes are regulated and should be completely free and never require a credit card nor trial agreement.
Equifax
Experian
TransUnion
I also looked into freeze the credit reports for all three of my kids, but it does seem to require much more physical paperwork and multiple identification documents to be mailed in.
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100%, I’ve kept all 3 of mine frozen as the default for years, and it’s never been more than a 5-minute delay blind process to schedule a temporary thaw
Online process*
It’s easier than before but also more open to bad actors to unfreeze. 2FA is better than not having it but can still be compromised.
While being able to freeze / unfreeze is good, the whole process isn’t mature. It can be difficult to know what credit reporting agency the company is using (they aren’t transparent about this or say they use all three) so you have to unfreeze all. The process should allow you to unfreeze for a specific company not just for a specific time period.
So easy now compared to the past. Also less cost. I’ve only had to thaw and refreeze once, to get a new credit card. They told me which agency to thaw. It was literally about one minute and I re-froze immediately. I can’t imagine a reason not to freeze all three.
Wow! No offense, but I can’t believe you haven’t had your Big 3 frozen for years. For years I found that only TransUnion was a pain to thaw, but even now that one takes less than a minute. Guess it goes without asking that you also haven’t frozen LexisNexis (888-395-0277) and Innovis (800-540-2505) ??? Tsk tsk.
Thanks Jonathan for your post and comments, I think it’s a good idea. I haven’t seen any replies to Sweepster’s reply, but I hadn’t thought about LexisNexis as well, thanks for the idea. Also, I hadn’t heard of Innovis, the wiki article indicates they are the 4th largest credit reporting agency behind the big three.
If you apply for new credit or an account that does a credit check, do you need to thaw all three of them?
In my case they told me which one, so I only had to thaw one.
You should ask – before applying – which credit report they pull. Some companies will tell you specifically, and some will not. Obviously, just thaw the one(s) required for the day you plan on applying, and refreeze the next day.
Thank you. Immensely helpful.
After your reported Jonathan on the NPD breach, finding my info leaked, definitely gonna follow your lead and freeze all three for myself and DW. As they say, an ounce of prevention…
I’ve frozen and thawed my credit for years. Love the fact that all 3 bureaus automatically freeze on the selected dates. What I don’t love is the hoops for minors Don’t want to send my child’s SSN via snail mail. Wish that process was easier.
I’m old, and up until 2018 it actually cost $10 a pop to freeze and/or unfreeze each of your credit reports. I got used to not having them frozen, but did maintain active credit monitoring from various services and would place a fraud alert every so often (which lets them know to ask for additional information beyond just a SSN).
A lot of our personal information can be found on the internet, like our cellphone number, email address, DOB, age, and address. I tried to have my information removed from the public databases before, but there’s always some hit and miss. What do you think about the BeenVerified.com?
Ditto. The NPD breech was the kick in the pants I needed to freeze my Big Three. It is much easier now than it used to be. I have all the credit cards I need, at least until I get off the RH Gold CC waitlist, so I likely won’t need to unfreeze.
Thanks for the reminder. I already had accounts at all three credit bureaus so it was very easy to log in and freeze them. Much easier than in years past, and I didn’t even get any upsell attempts.
Jonathan,
What do you do to protect your kids identities and future proof their credit report against malicious actors. It seems to me that not a week goes by where I don’t get a letter about some service or provider having a breach and leaking my kid’s personal information. For example earlier this year the biggest and most popular pediatric hospital in Chicago was subject to ransomware attack that locked it’s systems for over a month.
Sure enough, a letter comes a while later stating my kids personal info has been taken.
I just don’t want to discover when they turn 18 or whenever that their identities were stolen when they were two years old.
An article on the sub would be very much appreciated