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Comment by graybeardhacker | Hacker News Reader

Freeze your credit people! It's super easy. It's not a perfect fix but it's so trivial to do and it will help.

https://www.usa.gov/credit-freeze

You can unfreeze through an app whenever you want/need to.

Is there any reason not to keep credit frozen permanently, only unfreezing it when you're making a large purchase that requires it?

Unfortunately it isn’t an option in every country. In the U.S., you can freeze your credit for free, but in the UK, you can’t. I think we should get rid of the CRAs entirely, but that’s a conversation for another day.

That's what I do. It also slows my roll. It's an extra step I have to take before making that large purchase or applying for anything that requires a credit check.

It's an extra step, but a surprisingly simple one. When I opened a checking account recently the bank told me which credit agency they'd use, and I unfroze that account and ChexSystems (another credit agency you should freeze with that is used specifically for new bank accounts) in five minutes using their automated systems. You can supply a re-freeze date when unfreezing as well so you don't need to remember to do that manually once you're approved.

Keeping your credit frozen permanently is a great idea. Some of the credit agencies even encourage this with features such as a temporary unfreeze of your credit for a few days/weeks and then back to the permanently frozen state.

It’s a great idea! I only unfreeze my credit for big purchases like buying a house or car.

Yep. This is what I did after the first Experian data breach, for peace of mind. I am probably financially lucky enough that I don't need to constantly be checking or using my credit... but honestly it seems like this is what everyone needs to be doing.

I open credit cards for the bonuses frequently enough that freezing my credit would be more inconvenience than it’s worth.

Also, all the big bank websites seem to offer real time credit history monitoring for free, so I am betting I’ll just deal with any problem if/when they happen.

That’s what I do. But it’s a little bit of pain to unfreeze your credit with three bureaus when you want a new credit card. Wish there was a way to do this in one place.

After the first time unfreezing, I put the website URL, unlock pins, and concise instructions for all 3 as a single note in my password vault.

Doing all 3 takes ~5minutes now - which can usually happen in parallel with whatever paperwork the vendor needs to get in order.

This is how I have operated ever since the Equifax breach. Once that happened, none of the others seemed to matter, everything important for identity theft is out there.

I've had no problems. Someone will try to run my credit, it will fail, then I ask which one they're trying to use, and I unfreeze it for a day. Some of them have the option to unfreeze for a single pull with a 1 time code (if I remember correctly), but when I tried to use that the person trying to pull the report seemed clueless, so I had to do the 1 day unfreeze.

Credit is a weird ad-how system.

At some point, I wonder if folks will realize that having an unfrozen credit report is a sign of imprudence.

One interesting thing I ran into with frozen credit, is that you cannot sign up for USPS informed delivery without them running your credit as a method of address verification IIRC. If it is frozen the process gets stuck in limbo (at least it did many years ago when I ran into this situation)

This is no longer the case. I signed up for Informed Delivery last year with frozen credit with no issues.

As someone else mentioned, some authentication schemes require your credit to be unfrozen. This can include insurance companies (really any company that needs to verify your identity)

i don’t think credit freezing matters too much in this case because the leak wasn’t tied to SSN, name, etc. that would be used for identity theft. it was phone call and location data. much worse for privacy but less useful for financial fraud.

It sadly does matter for anyone who applied to work at advance autoparts , though. Their SSNs and the like are out there; the company's main database was hit.

I typically don’t “freeze” my credit but do have a handful of services actively monitoring my credit for free (have been involved with many data breaches) and it’s included with my credit cards.

> A credit freeze restricts access to your credit report

So if I freeze my credit, this will also deny access to the monitoring services AND financial institutions, right?

Side note: financial institutions often do “soft” credit pulls on active account holders to determine if they are eligible for credit limit increases. Have been growing my existing credit line for some time now without having to obtain additional credit cards. So far, close to $500K in unsecured credit.

Seems more like a nuclear option.

You can also freeze your non-credit banking:

https://www.chexsystems.com/security-freeze/place-freeze

It was recommended that I do this after a checking account was opened using my identity.

As others have stated, my default is "frozen." I put temporary thaws on when applying for credit, though in some cases, you'll be informed exactly which agency/agencies will be queried, and may not need to unfreeze all of them.

This is a great tip as most people only know of the big 3, thanks for sharing

what app or website do you use? Seems like you have to sign up for all three websites? Equifax Experian TransUnion?

I keep my credit frozen all the time, but still keep getting alerts about new "no credit check" bank accounts from companies like chime.com. Then I give them my PII again just to verify and close those accounts, even though I don't have any business with them.

While this is good advice, it's important to remember that we shouldn't have to do this.

Credit companies take our data, without consent or compensation, then turn around and charge you if you want to prevent abuse of that collection. It's a racquet.

Fuck that. I'm gonna open a bunch of credit cards, buy a bunch of cool shit, and when they ask me to pay my bill, just say my identity was stolen.

If I have to fight the credit bureaus anyway, I might as well get something out of it. Stealing my own identity seems pretty straightforward.

I was unable to get any of the three to verify my identity last I did this, and one of the three has never once in my 15 years of trying to get my free credit report let me actually get it.

I think you can go the paper route and mail something in to freeze

I couldn't find a reference to an app on the linked page, could you share more details on the app you use?

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