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Comment by ideonexus | Hacker News Reader

Others on HN have recommended this before and I finally went ahead and froze my credit reports with the credit agencies. I haven't missed it in the last six-months. If I ever need a car load or credit card, I can temporarily unfreeze with specific agencies to grant access to the creditor. Here's the numbers:

Equifax — 1-800-349-9960

Experian — 1-888-397-3742

TransUnion — 1-888-909-8872

Innovis — 1-800-540-2505

A lawyer friend of mine who specializes in identity theft told me this was too extreme a way to go and that I should sign up for Credit Karma. But isn't that just opening up yet another access point to thieves? Plus, I feel that freezing my credit denies these reporting agencies the value of data.

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I'd love to freeze my credit but as one of the millions of Americans living overseas I have learned that this is flat out impossible for us. I've even written to my Senators and they can't get it done either (One positive note, it was surprisingly easy to reach them and they seemed genuinely eager to help).

Fortunately 'identity theft' is an imaginary concept, you cannot have your identity stolen - you are still you and no one can ever change that. It's the financial institutions' problem to fix at the end of the day, but there is this expectation that you are obliged to help them understand how they fell for a scam, and you are expected to do this for free or they make your life more difficult.

We do need a better system for expats.

The entire term "identity theft" is designed to offload blame from the companies themselves. Should be called "criminally negligent data loss" in many cases.

Yes. A negligent bank blames you because they didn't bother verifying a criminal's claim to be you.

Someone on another HN thread suggested the term "bank slander".

I was able to complete freezes online for all. Are you able to say why it posed an obstacle for you to freeze your file please?

The credit bureaus were unwilling to validate requests from non-US address when I tried, just after news broke of the Equifax breach. The online forms literally had no provision for changing the country, with US State and ZIP code (of my current address) being mandatory fields.

I asked about it in the expats Stack Exchange site and others had the same problem: https://expatriates.stackexchange.com/questions/12104/how-ca...

Same goes for Social Security accounts, they require a US address before they permit you to log in online and monitor your account for fraud.

> A lawyer friend of mine who specializes in identity theft

That's odd. IANAL but everyone I know (including lawyers) says that freezing it is the way to go.

Maybe if everyone froze their credit your friend might be looking for new work? ;)

I've had mine frozen for years. Unfrozen it once to buy a house and a second time to buy a car. Not a problem. As a side benefit, it keeps me from applying for random credit cards.

I don't know if it denies the agencies the value of your data, but maybe so, because they clearly don't want you to do it.

> I don't know if it denies the agencies the value of your data, but maybe so, because they clearly don't want you to do it.

It does. There's a cost per credit file to store/manage, and with a freeze in place, no revenue generation can occur on that file.

Highly recommend US residents freezing their Work Number file [1], in addition to their credit file at each of the 3 credit reporting agencies.

[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/11/how-to-opt-out-of-equifa...

Anyone with an existing credit relationship with you can still do soft inqueries so it’s not complete but (on paper) it does prevent them from selling your name to others. However if you look even closer these companies have other databases which are not intended for being used in credit decisions and are thus not subject to FCRA and it’s impossible to have information removed from those. They have every address I ever lived at, every phone number I’ve ever had, a list of known associates including relatives of ex-girlfriends whom I lived with only briefly during school, and apparently I own a sporting goods store in Texas - can’t tell them otherwise.

Whoa wait what how do I find my info in there?

https://www.theworknumber.com/Employees/DataReport/

I wouldn't trust a fox to tell me how to keep my chickens.

Have fun trying to get it unfrozen. I work for a financial services company. Every time I speak with someone about unfreezing their credit, I laugh and tell them "good luck but I can't open a new account for you until your credit is unfrozen. I understand you froze it for identity protection but your credit is frozen. You told the financial companies to not open any new accounts, even for yourself. There's nothing I can do for you right now".

Have fun trying to get it unfrozen.

Why? Is it really that hard getting it unfrozen?

You just told the credit agencies that there's fraud on your account but now need just a one time exception to break the freeze. Just think about that from the agency's position.

What?I have unfrozen my account twice.It costs money every time I unfreeze that is about it.

What if the function of freeze_credit_report(..) is buggy too ? I do not think freezing a credit report will make this any safer. It might be just another flag in their already buggy system.

Seems like you did the right thing: https://youtu.be/vsMydMDi3rI?t=2397

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