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Comment by hairofadog | Hacker News Reader

It's definitely worth taking the time to set up a credit freeze with the three big agencies (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax). Initially setting it up is a pain in the butt and is rage-inducing, as you have to provide a bunch of personal data when the whole problem in the first place is that they're careless with your data.

However, once you've got it set up, it's very easy to freeze and unfreeze them. Just keep all the URLs, usernames, and passwords in a secure note somewhere, and any time you need to apply for credit, unfreeze them for a day or a week.

I used to have all sorts of identity theft problems (people taking out credit in my name) but freezing my credit has solved it.

Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

TransUnion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/cred...

I truly hate these companies but holding my nose and going through the process was worthwhile and I'd recommend it to anyone.

View on HN

As a long time freeze user, it seems literally every time I go to unfreeze the process has changed at one of them and it can't be unlocked with the username +password I setup. The last time was because I didn't log in for 3 years, meant that the account was locked without a bunch of additional validation. Sometimes the validation is just knowing the usual historical address/etc info they ask when you initially set it up (which seems insecure itself), or its more involved.

So, give it time, when you least expect it, they will take 60 days to validate something about your account before allowing you to unfreeze it.

This is my experience as well. Saving a username and password almost feels like it's worthless with these cretins. And then the dark patterns to upsell you on garbage hiding the actual unfreeze/thaw button.

TransUnion is broken for me, has been for years. I have to reset my password every single time.

Complain to the FTC (or the appropriate regulator). They are now very cognizant of dark patterns.

It is pretty wild that people can take out credit in your name without the issuer of the credit doing their dd, and then it causes you trouble afterwards. They should be fined massively for every time that this happens.

Before I actually had kids was the first .com bust... I was unemployed as were many in bay area and I filed for unemployment or medical (i cant recall now) but I was told that I was ineligible for benefits because I had a bunch of unpaid child support and other debts in Los Angeles... (never lived there, no kids at time, avoid LA all my life)

It took me months to prove that I wasa childless, 20-something dork in bay area...

nightmare - but any "credit" agency is scum

Not to be that guy, but I have one better.

My nephew is now 20. When he was 5 we gifted him some cash in a savings account (to teach him about money stuff). We were immediately served notice that he was overdue on two mortgages. It took three years to get that straightened out (and find out that his ss# was already compromised).

What a mess. What kind of an agency would see the ss#for a literal child and just think, yep, this is fine.

Sounds kinda similar to a former coworker ~2 decades ago. Tried to get a mortgage, rejected, he obtained his credit file...and ~80% of the stuff in "his" credit report was for similar-named people (mostly living in the same part of the U.S.). Report said that he had purchased a house at age 5, based on the well-paid job he got at Ford Motor Co. at age 4, etc., etc.

It's pretty much impossible to get your free annual credit report these days. It used to be relatively painless, but now you get slammed with ads for credit monitoring or whatever useless products. Or, the website just doesn't work, redirect to a page telling you to send a letter to some rando PO box.

I used to get my free credit report every year, but I stopped, which I'm sure is exactly what these scumbags want.

Which website (AnnualCreditReport.com? or the three bureaux' own sites? or some other third-party website (which?)) and what do you mean "the website" just doesn't work? Be aware there are tons of unaffiliated copycat websites claiming to be the official one and just want to serve you ads; don't use them.

IME AnnualCreditReport.com was easy-to-use and never sends ads. It sounds like you were tricked into using something else. If you genuinely had an issue with AnnualCreditReport.com (unlikely), please do tell the FTC: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports

Have you tried this site? https://www.annualcreditreport.com

LexisNexis Risk reported two inaccurate judgements in my risk report, preventing me from getting a mortgage in my name for almost a decade. It was finally settled in a class action, and I received a check for $625. I wish a terrible time to the individuals who were directly involved at LexisNexis, because someone, somewhere decided to just not care about their data hygiene because there was no incentive to.

https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/

I mean that's really what it comes down to, isn't it? The incentives. Why should any of them care? They make thousands of errors with regularity that cause millions of consumers endless hours of agony trying to get jobs, trying to buy homes, trying to buy cars, but like, we can't not use them. In my entire long life I have never once done business with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Yet each of them have an entire drawer's worth of data on me, all of which is stored incredibly insecurely, is rife with errors, and the only time I really hear from them is when they've once again screwed something up and have dropped it in my lap like a cat showing up with a dead bird: "Heads up, you gotta handle this."

Like, name one thing they actually do right. Literally anything. I challenge anyone who reads this to name a single bad thing that would happen if all these leech companies got Thanos-snapped out of the universe tomorrow.

Banks would have to find an alternative. And that's a vacuum which could be filled with worse actors. I keep close tabs with all 3 bureaus because that's the reality we live in.

> Banks would have to find an alternative.

We might have worse actors or arbitrary decisions or more expensive loans. Or, why not, all three!

That's awful. I assume you didn't remove yourself from the class action, because you didn't have or want to invest the time and resources into suing them yourself? $625 is a laughable amount of money for the amount of bullshit they put you through.

Your assumption is correct. Time is non renewable and I instead focus on higher leverage efforts, such as donating my time to Congressional representatives and federal regulators who craft legislation or attempt enforcement actions (respectively). Do things that scale and all that jazz.

> My nephew is now 20. When he was 5...

So that was 15 years ago when these mortgages were taken out in his name? Placing it between 2007 and 2008.

That's basically right at the inflection point when the housing market had gotten out of control and started crashing down. This was caused because anyone could get a mortgage, regardless of whether they could afford it or who they were. The banks were accused of doing zero due diligence. In some cases no income verification, no identity verification, no job verification, etc.. You could take a mortgage out in your dogs name, and also apparently a 5 year old's name too.

I like to think that the system is better now, but that's probably a fantasy.

To make this worse, they won't even let you apply a credit freeze online until you're eighteen years old.

I had this come up when I was buying a house.

I have a very common name and some guy 20-30 years older than me had past due child support. I also have no kids. This was my first house purchase so I was completely ignorant of the process. What blew my mind is that before verifying whether or not that was me, they informed the sellers of it. I forget the process I went through to prove it wasn't me, I probably just showed them the guys age vs mine or something. That was wild though, like, the sellers could've just cancelled the sale right there if they didn't want to sell to a supposedly deadbeat dad. I couldn't believe they informed the sellers.

Buying a house is awful. Telling someone all of my finances and everything else when I already have an approved mortgage. Ugh. I did have a worse experience SELLING that house though, if you can imagine.

What a miserable process. Worst thing is that these functions will increasingly be black boxes. You'll just get a negative result from the seller or buyer or landlord or bank and have no recourse. And that's especially unfair when we're talking about something as vital as shelter for decent citizens.

Let me rephrase it so the meaning of what you just said impregnate my mind: you were denier money because their records showed you badly needed it. Sound to me the credit agencies aren't the only evil.

Agreed. It is astounding to me that a private company can accuse me of a crime with no proof that I did it, and then the government will enforce that without question. You would think they would need fingerprints or something to prove that a particular person did something.

How close does such an accusation come to defamation?

One lawsuit away.

They're not accusing you of a crime, though. They're pinning debt on you. It's not just a pedantic difference either, because it means it falls under an entirely different body of law for assumption of liability.

This is the magic of reconceptualizing fraud as "identity theft" in the first place.

There's a pretty funny sketch about that: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

It was never more than marketing for "identity theft protection". When you put it like that, it starts to sound an awful lot like paying a protection racket doesn't it?

That's ancillary; the biggest thing is offloading liability that would sensibly lie with the institution that lent money to a fictitious version of you.

Is it actually a problem or are people just worrying about it? I dont see how a bank or court can enforce anything if you didn't do it.

It's a major concern. When someone steals your identity, they can incur debts, commit crimes, and manipulate data under your name. Victims often spend extensive time and energy clearing up the aftermath. While it seems counterintuitive, banks and institutions usually hold you liable until you can definitively prove the activity wasn't yours. Essentially, in the realm of identity theft, it's often 'guilty until proven innocent' rather than the other way around

It's more like "you spent it until you can prove you didn't", which might be worse.

Sure I can guess that too. I haven't ever seen anyone with problems though. Does it really happen? Given that nearly every SSN and address has leaked you'd think it would be everywhere.

I had this experience after the Equifax hack a while ago when something like 100M+ people's info was stolen. Until I froze my credit I was getting phone calls every few days asking if I had _really_ tried to open some line of credit I had never heard of. The people calling me explained that ever since the Equifax hack they had to do a bunch more due diligence because all they were getting was fraud. No lines of credit were successfully opened in my name, and the issue stopped completely once I froze all my credit.

I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.

An example from last month. "Byron Bay breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts" https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-25/byron-bay-data-breach...

In Australia.

In the Southern District of Florida, United States of America:

    But then she was charged in the United States with offences including trademark infringement, and was told to pay damages of $US1.2 million ($1.8 million).

Her 'bogo-debt' can still be sold for cents on the dollar to local (Australian) collecters who might haress her, future vacations to US STeates and Territories are now ill advised, etc.

That's odd, I'm in Pennsylvania and have had multiple fraudulent purchases with my accounts over the years. Every single time, the bank put the money back in my account within days and I never heard anything more about it.

fraudulent purchases are not identity theft.

In the West they give you money in someone's else name without an ID? Must be a paradise.

It's amazing what you can do without an ID in the States.

Obligatory rant against the "Identity Theft" deception promoted by banks.

The victims of fraud in these cases are the banks, not you.

You still have your identity. The banks/creditors gave their money (not yours) to a criminal through their own neglect.

It's an unconscionable fantasy that you as an individual are the victim in these situations when you had no involvement whatsoever.

Laws need to be updated to reflect this reality. Banks will continue to act haphazardly so long as they are allowed to pass the bill for their own carelessness onto innocent people.

Awareness should be spread by disavowing the entire "identity theft" deceit any time it comes up in a public forum.

Highly relevant Mitchell and Webb radio skit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

You build up a reputation for being a reliable borrower of debts or a good/clean societal record and someone steals that identity to abuse it and leave you with the baggage. You report "Identity Theft" to regain that identity and reputation, not on behalf of the money banks lost to fraudsters, hence the name.

There are plenty of things wrong with the current credit identity system, the name of identity theft is either not one of them at all or near the bottom of the list.

> someone steals that identity

This is exactly the fantasy that we need to dispel, not rationalize.

Nobody steals your identity. You always have your identity, and nobody else ever does. Your identity is not the few pieces of trivia a criminal can easily discover about you.

The criminal never takes or has your identity. The bank is simply neglecting to correctly identify someone.

> steals that identity to abuse it

Criminals are not abusing your identity, they are abusing the banks' careless failure to correctly identify people.

> to abuse it and leave you with the baggage

The criminal is not leaving you with the baggage, the bank is. They use willfully inept processes, because they have tricked you into believing you should bear the responsibility for the consequences of their own hubris.

You're confusing two concepts that share a word: Your identity in the sense of self worth and personal ideals, and other people's view of you, your identity to them - Their interpretation of the former, to some extent, but also their judgements on your trustworthiness.

It's the latter that's being stolen. It's a crime against both you and your friends and creditors.

Having your identity stolen and having your identity permanently removed are not identical actions. If I use a keylogger to grab your passwords and impersonate you in emails, forums, and so on then your identity is stolen, it's in use by someone else instead of you without consent for a period of time. This does not mean your identity has been removed from you permanently. This also does not mean your identity was always in your control just because the sites should have done more verification to see if it was you. It was still stolen but the fraud wasn't caught, and the lost money due to fraud falls between the criminal and 3rd party regardless independent of your identity being fraudulently used. Keep in mind that's how it is today, if your identity is stolen it is already the bank that eats the loss due to fraudulent lending.

If you still disagree please try to make an argument without mentioning banks. Identity theft covers a lot more than banking fraud so the explanation shouldn't explain how you want the term to be changed to something which focuses solely on banks.

The processes in place do suck. That has nothing to do with the name of the crime though.

> identity, noun, The condition of being a certain person or thing.

Someone who steals my passwords can impersonate me, they can not become me. Someone who tricks people into thinking they are me is still not me. An account is not an identity.

My online accounts are not me, and I am not my online accounts.

There are many dictionary definitions of identity. Take Merriam-Webster:

"1a: the distinguishing character or personality of an individual

2: the condition of being the same with something described or asserted

3a: sameness of essential or generic character in different instances"

Or the Cambridge dictionary:

"a person's name and other facts about who they are:"

Of course, you're always welcome to intentionally pick the incorrect context (going back to Merriam-Webster):

"4: an equation that is satisfied for all values of the symbols"

And just as easily rant the name of the crime has nothing to do with math so it needs to be renamed.

If it's open to interpretation, you're choosing the worst interpretation.

How this is interpreted is the primary problem that needs to be solved in order to legislate the issue, and from the interpretations you're supporting, it seems you're firmly on the side of the parties failing to identify fraudsters correctly, versus the innocent individuals.

"Worst interpretation" isn't about matter of preference on which interpretation is moral rather intentionally choosing the least supportive definition as proof the phrase is a misnomer. Ignoring the Cambridge one, which seems to be post phrase, definitions like "sameness of essential or generic character in different instances" are very stealable things, even if another definition is not.

As I've stated I'm in favor of the individuals. When doing so, I like to stick to factual and logical reasons why instead of insist the root of the problem is the chosen definition of "identity" does not match my preferred one. The root of the problem is the current process for dealing with identity theft is more burdensome than it needs to be on individuals. If you change the name it's still too burdensome because, outside of you, everyone already interprets "identity" to mean what it should in this case. That the process is bad is not proof the interpretation of the phrase is bad and needs to be fixed, it's proof the process is bad and needs to be fixed.

Just because someone disagrees with one component of your stance does not mean they automatically agree with all opposing positions that followed from it.

Identity can’t be stolen. You can be impersonated. I think the point they’re making is that it’s not the victims fault if someone is impersonating them. I would agree. It makes zero sense for the victim of impersonation to be held accountable in any way for the actions of the criminal.

There is just more than a singular definition of identity in English and one of them can't be stolen while several others can. Impersonation is one way of stealing one of those definitions identity theft refers to. This doesn't mean the definition of identity is simultaneously violated.

The victim of impersonation isn't held accountable for the action of the criminal, particularly with banks. That's precisely what identity theft laws protect. I'm in favor of making that process even easier for the victim wherever possible but changing the name is not that.

If you still disagree please try to make an argument without mentioning banks.

I don't think it's possible to avoid mentioning the banks. They are the ones committing the harm against you.

They are a stand-in for numerous other institutions who abuse you. You can take the name "bank" to mean any organization who is defrauded, and then abuses you to obtain repayment for that fraud.

I think it's important to recognize that this is a two-step process. The middle-man in this procedure is crucial, because they are the ones with a lot of power to use the legal system against you. If they were somebody other than a bank or other significant corporation, you'd be able to say, "No, I'm not the John Smith you gave money to. Go away and find that person." The imbalance makes it necessary to define the argument in terms of banks and similar institutions.

Criminal identity theft is one class of examples. An example scenario from this class is someone passes your identifiers off as theirs while committing a crime. Nobody was defrauded, no money exchanged, but you'll still want to report identity theft.

Claiming identity theft is precisely the process to notify the bank (or others) they cannot legally abuse you to get repayment for that fraud or you are not responsible for those crimes or whatever occured on your behalf. Under identity theft laws they are responsible for the loss due to fraud, not you. The same as credit card companies. The legal system is used but as much by you saying "I didn't buy that house, clear my records and eat the losses" as by the bank initially saying "this person didn't pay their loan". To not involve the legal system by both parties just opens up an even worse can of worms of fraud.

One thing I do agree on is that anything that can reasonably be done to make the process easier on the victim of identity theft should be as the process is too hard on them right now. Probably more fines to most middlemen to increase the cost further beyond their losses. I just don't think changing the name of the crime has anything to do with that kind of improvement.

> If I use a keylogger to grab your passwords and impersonate you in emails, forums, and so on then your identity is stolen

This is actually a great example.

If you impersonate me in an e-mail and talk someone into sending a thousand dollars they owed me into some strange account, a reasonable victim isn't going to come to me and say "we're square now, because I paid that fraudster's account what I owed you."

Instead they should admit they made a mistake in assuming it was me based on suspiciously inadequate information and pursue the fraudster if they want their money back.

I mostly agree with you that banks are hiding their victim status but I think your framing is too intense. The magical idea of identity as an intangible self isn’t helpful.

It is bank fraud and imitation with the intent to abuse the reputation of the person imitated. It should be illegal to imitate you when it negatively hurts you. It’s illegal to imitate police and doctors etc because it uses their reputations for fraudulent means. This is the same thing.

Banks are the financially defrauded victims in this situation, but the victims are also individuals because banks passed the reputational risk of fraud to the customers. If your credit score is hurt and you need to hire lawyers to fix it or you get denied for a mortgage (or just a good rate), you’ve experienced tangible harm.

Banks know they experience harm here. They plan for it. It’s baked into the prices and financial statements. Read the essays by Patrick McKenzie, he’ll argue that fraud is intentionally tolerated. They know that the consumer won’t be expected pay once the fraud is discovered. That’s not their goal, and they’re not being deceitful here.

You can argue if this system is overall good or bad, but it almost certainly has led to cheaper credit for everyone. Outsourcing credit worthiness to a magic national number (or 3) is cheaper than every credit union assessing risk themselves, with less knowledge.

> the victims are also individuals because banks passed the reputational risk of fraud to the customers

In that case I am not a victim of the fraudster, I am a victim of the bank.

The banks do not have sufficient incentive to improve their identification methods, so long as we tolerate the concept that we bear any responsibility for a transaction that involves only themselves and a fraudster who knows the answers to a few trivia questions about me.

It’s like defamation. If someone goes and spreads a bunch of terrible lies about you by pretending to be you… then you are their victim.

You’re not the victim of people who merely believe the lies and start to avoid you.

That's not a good analogy. If those people believe the fraudster and give them something.. I'm not liable for whatever they gave that person. You're leaving out the most important part. Avoiding != Requiring something.

I think I was focusing on the fact that identity fraud ruins your credit score, so you can’t get loans and the such for yourself.

To me that was akin to being ostracized because your reputation was ruined by an impersonation.

But most victims of identity theft don't have to repay the loans. They just have ruined credit scores. So I think it's an excellent analogy

> The banks do not have sufficient incentive to improve their identification methods

On the contrary, they stand to risk 100% of the loaned money. What more could be at risk. Also the fair credit reporting act has pretty strict requirements for what a bank or credit agency should do when you’ve told them the debt is fraudulent, returning you to whole eventual.

What would be required to fix false identity frauds? Is that more or less tolerable for society than X% of people dealing with a stolen identity. What about people who have some problematic history (ran away from home, prior homeless, etc)? How would strict requirements impact them?

Really I guess my question. Oxygen_crisis, why do you believe identity theft is actually a problem that needs solving?

> It is bank fraud and imitation with the intent to abuse the reputation of the person imitated. It should be illegal to imitate you when it negatively hurts you.

I think the argument is that the hurt is generated by the bank. Why isn't it the bank's responsibility to have their shit together and not do that?

You are not wrong at all. There is a certain level of fraud tolerated by banks so that they can more easily make loans to people. It's the classic security vs. convenience trade-off.

Two big problems are:

1. If you happen to be one of the victims of the fraud, it hurts! Sometimes a lot! A lot more than it hurts the bank.

2. If you don't like the level of (in)security that the banks have chosen, what other options do you have? Right now I don't know, I think maybe Bitcoin is your best bet?

Even if I pretend for a minute to seriously believe Bitcoin is less susceptible to fraud, using a different financial product doesn't help since the entire fraud takes place without your participation in many cases. They can just as well open credit lines with banks you don't use as ones you do.

I don't see how bitcoin changes much, other than you have to convince CoinBase that it wasn't your identity. Bitcoin specifically tries to avoid being tied to identity.

> Bitcoin is your best bet?

Because nobody can take out a fraudulent loan in bitcoin? Well.. that’s problem accurate.

I’m just not sure how is bitcoin even the tiniest bit relevant in this case?

It might generate even cheaper credit if the banks were allowed to randomly seize your assets whenever they felt like it with no justification whatever, so long as you weren't one of the unlucky targets.

There seem to be stories in these comments that leave consumers as victims without there being any intentional imitation. e.g., the five year old child getting mortgage payment demands. Or the person struggling to get a mortgage because of someone else with the same name but different age.

What is stolen is information relied on for authentication, but using “identity” with that meaning is common, even in technology.

That is, after all, what an “identity provider” actually provides.

"Identity provider" in technology is something that should be disavowed heavily, too. Identity is hard to define, but it's definitely not something that should be provided, unless we're talking about assuming others' identities.

Giving up ownership of our own identities led to very harmful results.

Often, bankers themselves are the fraudsters.

If you want to sell this idea you at least need to have a name for it.

Fraud. It's called fraud. Someone is defrauding the bank. The bank is the victim. However, the person whose identity was referenced by the criminal has nothing to do with the interaction. The criminal did not steal an identity. They stole money from a bank through fraud.

Lets take this one step farther, call it identity fraud and not just fraud; otherwise, identity theft will probably be with us.

That term was already coined as a synonym. I wonder which form of fraud does not involve some kind of misrepresentation though. What makes it notable that a person who actually exists is being used as the conman's fictitious identity if we aren't interested in somehow offloading the risk to that person? Presumably this happened before the 1960s when it began to be called "identity theft" (and if you look at an ngram the term really only comes to be widely used in the mid-to-late 90s).

>Banks will continue to act haphazardly so long as they are allowed to pass the bill for their own carelessness onto innocent people.

I kind of feel like banks are fans of one mister Dewey Crowe, "The anus is upon you" to protect your data. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1489428/characters/nm0380632?re...)

Many people don’t know this but you also need to set up a freeze at https://nctue.com/consumers/

I had to deal fraudsters getting cell phones and also electricity to their apartment.

Setting a freeze up here solved it.

Thank you for this, I had no idea this was a thing. Out of curiosity how did you find out about this?

Maybe from here: https://www.equifax.com/business/data-network/nctue/

Seems to be an Equifax product.

I really don’t remember. But I kept getting people creating different accounts that I wouldnt know about until it went to collections and dinged my credit. Took me a couple years to finally get it locked down. After 5ish police reports and ftc identity theft reports that all these energy/cell phone companies require for you to dispute.

It’s maddening that these companies give out service with wrong variations of my name and no ID but then want me to jump through hours of hoops to get it removed from collections.

Luckily I got it all resolved prior to rates shooting up so I was able to refi at all time low rates or this would have cost me a lot of money.

I wonder which is worse: not setting up a freeze and risk being the victim of identity theft, or setting up a freeze by submitting your info and risk having it stolen from NCTUE?

> Q. Can I opt out of pre-approved offers based on NCTUE data?

> A. Yes. NCTUE provides information to companies that provide consumers with pre-approved offers of credit. If you would like to Opt-Out and exclude NCTUE information about you from being used in lists provided to companies that make pre-approved offers of credit (as provided in the Fair Credit Reporting Act), you may call us toll free at 1-888-327-4376.

> You may also submit your request via mail to NCTUE at the address below. Please include your name, address, Social Security number and date of birth in your request.

... well that is infuriating.

I've never taken on any debt in my life, would I still need to do this or an I fine since I've never initialized anything in the first place?

That's a really good question that I don't know the answer to. I would guess that they have a file on you somehow – Utility bills? Landlords checking your credit? But I'm not confident enough to know what would be the best thing to do in that scenario.

In the US utilities are normally yet another credit reporting agency: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-report...

Do you have a credit card? That is technically debt.

If someone has your information, they can open a credit card under your name and max it out. Or even more common, they’ll get a car loan under your name. Since loans are furnished at the end of the day, they’ll often get 2 or 3 car loans in the same day.

I don't have a credit card, I only ever pay using cash or debit card directly from my bank account.

Somebody using your social security number and other information would be able to apply for credit. As soon as they do that, the bureau(s) called by the lender would have a file on "you".

The federal government requires that all three major bureaus (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) provide you one credit report each per year, for free. You can request it here, the official source for these mandated free reports:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

Thank you for the information, I'll look into this.

Yes, still worthwhile. The bureaus collect all sorts of information and attach it to you regardless of whether the information is even correctly attributed. A freeze might prevent some of that nonsense.

I had a difficult time getting loans to go to college many years ago. Come to find out my credit was through the floor due to all 3 agencies misattributing dozens of pages of bad loans to me starting when I was only a toddler. The middle initials & socials were 1 character off each, but it all still went to my name.

Unfortunately I didn't have the knowledge to freeze my credit when I was 3 years old - my fault, I should have known I would later suffer the consequences of my inaction.

You have to be the dumbest toddler I have ever met!

We need a financial revolution (which is what OWS was all about -- and you know how they responded to that - especially in SFO.... "people are mad at the FED!, so must remove all planter boxes in front of the SF FED and install giant granite bollards and update our lifting stop gate at the entrance - and we have to get our fed workers to stop bragging about their $30,000 a month bonuses loudly on BART (yes this is an actual thing)

It doesn't matter that you don't take on debt. The point is to protect yourself from unscrupulous individuals who want you to take on debt on their behalf.

Full stop, yes you should freeze.

Issue isn’t if you have debt or not. Credit rating agencies start tracking very early, and what they’ll track for you is basically “no data/low credit score.”

That doesn’t mean you’re not in the system, or more importantly - doesn’t mean qn attacker can’t take out debt in your name.

A freeze is the only thing that stops this for you and your kids. I hate that it works this way but such is life.

> I've never taken on any debt in my life

Why not? Do you ever anticipate getting a mortgage? If yes, then you probably should be.

Sadly, if they are under 35, they may never have the chance. Home ownership seems to be going the way of the Dodo.

But credit scores are used for apartment rentals, and even employment.

> if they are under 35, they may never have the chance. Home ownership seems to be going the way of the Dodo.

This is false.

Millenials are trailing previous generations a little, but > 50% of them now own homes:

https://rentalhousingjournal.com/more-than-50-percent-of-mil...

Hmm, given the average age of a millenial is ~33 the statistic and the claim (exaggerated as it is) don't necessarily need to be totally out of alignment.

The primary problem with this claim as it usually presented is that it tends to ignore that earlier generations did not go from kindergarten to home ownership in a year: you grow up with your parents' generation's condition as "normal" when it actually represents 30-50 years of "accumulation".

So yeah, 10 years ago, very, very few millenials owned a home. But that was true for 23 year old boomers too.

You can look at that data too.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...

Millennials own less homes than boomers did at their age. Though based upon the data Gen Z is possibly turning things around.

Anecdotal though it is most millennials I know that have houses only have them because they were inherited rather than purchased outright.

Also anecdotal, none of the millennials homeowners I know inherited them, but all are software developers.