I strongly recommend that you freeze your credit. It’s not the end all be all but it’s a good way to keep entities from applying for loans, credit cards or open accounts in your name. I don’t know what is the equivalent measure one can take outside of the US.
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Why should I do a bunch of work jumping through corporate hoops, including having to assent to a heap of unconscionable legalese bullshit and whatnot, to help these organizations and their conspirators to not libel and attempt to defraud me?
I protect myself per what's legally obligated. For established accounts, that means checking transactions within the regulation E timeframes. For companies that I have no relationship with, that means responding to any notices I actually receive that falsely claim I'm doing business with them or the like. Beyond that, it is not my responsibility to help this terrible financial surveillance industry, which wouldn't even exist if it were up to me.
I’m currently going through process of freezing my credit. The real kicker here is all three bureaus freeze processing services are down… Imagine that
I don’t know about other countries, but freezing credit in Australia doesn’t really work.
To freeze your credit, you first have to produce your ID to companies such as Equifax which have been responsible for many data leaks. So you’re putting yourself at additional risk.
Secondly, anyone with a copy of your ID can just unfreeze your credit. So it’s basically useless.
Can they? I have to use a password, but I guess I've never tried the "forgot password" option.
As far as giving my ID to Equifax; they already have my details whether I give it to them or not.
In my opinion, freezing your credit is more of a nuclear option. It’s a bit of a pain to unfreeze your credit for valid credit applications or simple credit limit increase requests.
Also I think freezing also prevents soft credit pulls so automatic credit limit increases won’t be given or add an extra hassle of “unfreezing” to get the increase.
What I do is use those “free” credit monitoring services (ie, credit karma, credit sesame) and monitoring provided by some of my credit cards to get full coverage across all credit bureaus.
If any unrecognized application for credit comes through using my information, then I will immediately get notifications.
Otherwise, I just continue as normal. Request CLIs for my current cards and grow my available credit.
It is a giant pain. But freezing doesn't seem to prevent soft pulls, at least, I still see them on my reports.
However, in the past month, despite having frozen credit, someone managed to get a BofA checking account opened enough that I got emails about it, and had to spend a ton of time trying to get to the fraud department (I do have BofA credit cards, which I guess I should have gone through to get to fraud). They had already denied it, but sent me emails, I guess because of the existing accounts with that social.
Additionally, my spouse recently got a Square debit card mailed to her, in the (inaccurate) name of a local business. Again, very difficult to get ahold of the fraud department. Of course, someone rented a luxury apartment in her name in Oakland a couple years ago, and Oakland PD still hasn't called back, and literally nobody else cares; the management was responsive, but said they weren't even sure that they could evict, given COVID; I just hope the rooftop espresso bar is nice for the fraudster.
What exactly is the pain of unfreezing? I was able to do it all online in a couple of minutes on each of the three major credit bureau sites.