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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

This part was the most interesting to me;

There is a final precaution that should block anyone from signing up as you: Readers who have taken my advice to freeze their credit files with the four major consumer credit reporting bureaus (Equifax, Experian, Innovis and Trans Union) will find they are not able to sign up for Informed Delivery online. That’s because having a freeze in place should block Equifax from being able to ask you the four KBA questions.

Do people realize that the freeze locks you out of any service using KBA to authenticate? E.g. would this include sites like login.gov?

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Isn't that an even better reason to freeze your credit reports, given that Equifax was hacked and they are providing knowledge-based authentication for the USPS and who knows what other services.

>That’s because having a freeze in place should block Equifax from being able to ask you the four KBA questions.

My father put a freeze on all three agencies when the news of the breach came out. Today, I tried to help him sign up for informed delivery (on the theory that if he did, it would be harder for someone else to do so in his name).

I don't know what impact the freeze had on the KBA, because it showed him a batch of four questions with information that was definitely his (like, last 4 digits of SSN), but then wouldn't verify him; he then got two more batches of questions that had absolutely no relevance, and choosing "none of the above" just resulted in two more failures to verify.

Is it easy or possible to freeze and unfreeze on demand as needed?

Sure if you like paying the fee every time. Shouldn’t have a fee to begin with though. Just a way to talk people out of it, really.

Equifax is waiving the fee since the recent incident.

From what I read it's just on their identity service which isn't actually a freeze. Also doesn't solve the problem of the other agencies charging. You really need a freeze against them all.

Apparently, in some states, they're not allowed by law charge a fee. I'm in NY, and I was able to freeze my credit reports for free.

The bureaus allow lifting a freeze temporarily, but there could be a fee, depending on what state you live in.

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