If I had more room in that title, I’d have added “And I think you should, too.”
Here’s why: The amount of data breaches has become absolutely out of control. I honestly can’t believe there aren’t stiffer (are there any?!) government penalties for getting PII (Personal Identifiable Information) like your name and social security number stolen.
As it is, I’ve had a credit card number duplicated something like 7 times in the last year and change. And the would-be thieves had not just my card number and CVV, but also my phone number. In all cases, fraud alerts were triggered and I got new cards and it was simply a pain in the you know what.
But after the last breach that affected, and I’m not kidding here, 2.9 Billion people worldwide including full names, addresses, date of birth, phone numbers, and Social Security Numbers, I decided that I really don’t want to deal with identity theft.
Given that I apply for more credit cards than the average person (although I’ve really slowed my roll in recent years), I ever wanted to deal with the hassle. And I still don’t.
But the freeze process is free and pretty simple – assuming you don’t have any issues creating your account at each of the 3 major agencies.
Here are the three links you need:
- Equifax (if you have issues, call 888-298-0045)
- Experian (if you have issues, call 888‑397‑3742)
- TransUnion (if you have issues, call 800-916-8800)
Unlike extremely similar services that each service sells with credit monitoring, these freezes are quick and free (by law!). They must freeze your credit within a day and unfreezes must take place within an hour.
I know that’s an hour too long when you have your trigger finger on a new card, especially for a quickly expiring offer! But it’s nothing compared to a stolen identity.
You’ll need the standard information to identity you, such as your DOB, SSN, and address. If there are mismatches, etc, it should tell you what you need to do to resolve – or call the phone numbers above.
For me, except for Equifax being overloaded for a few days preventing me from opening the account, the entire process from that point forward took about 15 minutes.
I bookmarked each “freeze” page so I know where to go when I need to unfreeze.
I assume it will be equally painless to unfreeze when the time next comes.
Now, to be clear, this won’t stop people from getting your credit card numbers on the dark web. It won’t prevent me from potentially going through an 8th cloned account this year. And there are other types of fraud that this won’t stop.
But it will stop someone from opening a new account with my information and I feel like the odds are no longer in our favor…
Just remember to unfreeze before you click those MilesTalk links to open a new credit card! 😉
Thoughts?
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You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards.
New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
Be glad nobody has been able to hijack your phone account. If someone gets that through tricking the mobile provider’s customer service rep, then they’ll lock you out of every account that your phone number is linked to, probably draining your financial accounts in the process.
P.S. If your mobile provider doesn’t provide strong account security protections, then switch to one that does.
@Jack: Excellent tip. I do have that setup myself and everyone should.
My phone provider has annoyingly good security. On this multi-phone plan, only the primary phone can be used for security purposes. So any time I need to do something with the company I have to borrow the primary phone in order to do anything for any phone.