lock or freeze credit

[frank]

I was thinking about freezing my credit and looking at experian I noticed I had 2 options. lock or freeze. which is the best way to go for convenience when you need to unlock or unfreeze it temporarily? is locking or freezing a good idea? I would like to know of any past problems or drawbacks to doing this. thanks


frank

 

[ShokWaveRider]

Freeze, All 3 Credit Bureaus. Experian is the easiest to use IMHO.

 

[ttvjef]

Since my spouse and I don't have any near term plans that would require significant credit we "froze" our credit in 2016 with all three agencies. So far we have not needed to unfreeze so I'm not certain about how difficult to unfreeze would be, however I do have the Pin required for all of them to unfreeze. Be sure to keep and secure the Pin's otherwise it may be more of a hassle to unfreeze.

 

[Corporateburnout]

Freezing with all credit bureaus is your best bet. I've had mine frozen for more than 8 years and needed to unfreeze on a couple of occasions for car leases. I only has to unfreeze with the one bureau that the dealer uses to check credit.

As someone had said keep your pin numbers handy as it will make it a very easy process.

 

[Rianne]

We froze all three credit bureaus.

 

[Sunset]

Freeze probably has legal teeth, so the credit bureau's invented "lock" to get around the legal requirements.

I used freeze.

 

[donheff]

Freeze is easy to do and easy to suspend if you keep track of your pins.

 

[Carol1862]

I freeze as well. When I recently opened a credit card they told me to unfreeze Experian and call them back. They approved it while I was on the phone and I froze it back again. Very easy

 

[rk911]

we’ve frozen our credit at all three. good thing, too. just a few months ago someone tried to open a CC in our name but the attempt was foiled by the credit freeze.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/credit-lock-and-credit-freeze/

 

[frank]

thanks for the information.

 

[Golden sunsets]

We have frozen credit and had to temporarily unfreeze perhaps 4 times. Unfreezing is not a big deal, if you have kept careful track of your user names and pins. Both you and your DW should freeze, not just one of you. Also note that you will need to unfreeze for other things other than borrowing. Opening a deposit account at a new bank will usually require you to unfreeze your credit.

 

[frank]

What is the benefit of both me and my wife freezing credit? when you say opening a deposit account, do you mean for cd's or other things?

 

[Golden sunsets]

Your wife would freeze her credit for the same reasons that you would freeze your credit. Assuming you have some joint accounts, the theft of her info or fraudulent activity under her name could adversely affect your credit. I'm not sure if all types of deposit account openings at a new institution require a credit check. CD's do for sure.

 

[audreyh1]

Some institutions use your credit history to verify your identity. I hate this practice as KBA answers are usually part of the public record. It’s easy to find out someone’s current address including county. You can find out when their home was purchased as property tax records are public. It probably doesn’t take too much work to figure out the vehicle registered to an individual.

We had to unlock our credit just to run this credit record based “identity verification” set of KBAs. So in many cases the freeze locks out this horrible practice.

With another company where we already had a savings account and CDs, we opened a checking account and they had to text us with a code to call them. The associate explained that because our credit was frozen, they needed to use an alternative method of identity verification. No problem as they used information specific to our other accounts. Much better!

I thought that if a company already had a relationship with you as a customer, they had access to your credit report. Maybe they do, but they are at least blocked from using your credit history for identity verification which is a good thing.

 

[Spock]

For those who say the froze "all 3", there are a lot more than 3.
There is another credit freeze related post on here with a PDF list of something like 47 credit agencies and more popping up all the time.

At a minimum you should do 5. In addition to Experian, Equifax, and Transunion, you should also freeze Innovis and NCTUE.

NCTUE is used by most cell phone and some utility companies... this one is important for the more elaborate scams where scammers hijack your phone account inorder to get your 2FA txts, or stick you with their phone bills.