
Freezing your credit is now free in all states under a new law - kimsk112
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/09/21/equifax-free-credit-freeze-new-law/1377815002/
======
fpgaminer
Freezing your credit sounds scary, but I do generally recommend looking into
it. I froze my credit awhile back now, long before the Equifax breach, just as
a proactive measure. Better to do it _before_ your identity gets stolen.

Since the freeze I've opened up a few lines of credit (loans, credit cards,
etc). It's not that painful. Most of the time you just find out which credit
bureau(s) they're going to pull from beforehand, do a temp unfreeze, and then
submit your application like normal. It takes a few extra minutes of your
time, but is otherwise not a bother.

There have been a few instances where the companies I was working with were
just ... incompetent and didn't know who they were going to pull their reports
from. Yeah ... but in those cases I just submitted the application and waited
for the rejection letters to roll in, which state which company reported a 0
credit score :P

Is it as easy as before? No. But how often do you open lines of credit or bank
accounts? Not often. And I don't think doing those things should be easy
anyway. The huge plus here is that you don't have to worry about identity
theft like everyone else. I've seen too many friends and family go through
identity theft now. It's horrific, stressful, time consuming, and seemingly
endless.

And on the bright side, I think having your credit frozen is becoming more and
more common, which means companies are getting more used to dealing with
people who have them. So the process is becoming more streamlined over time.

Now the caveats. Yes, it cost me money. It may still cost money even with this
new law; as a fellow comment points out you may still have to pay whenever you
need to temporarily unfreeze your credit. And yes, it's a racket. In many ways
it feels like a shakedown. But such is life. People cheat you out of your
money every day. This wasn't a mountain I was willing to die on.

~~~
aphextron
I'd recommend just actively monitoring your credit before going overboard and
freezing it. There's a bunch of different free credit report apps that will
send you push notifications the moment anything changes, and things like
credit pulls show up almost instantly now. I get notified immediately if
anything changes on my report via text, email, and push.

~~~
drfuchs
Better to freeze. Credit monitoring just gives you quicker notification that
you've already entered a huge world of hurt. The fraudster has successfully
struck, and now you have to go to work to undo the damage, which can be a
years-long nightmare. ("Well, it shows here that you bought a truck and
stopped paying. Not you, you say? Prove it! Oh, and until you do, don't expect
to have good credit. Maybe never, actually.")

~~~
reaperducer
_Credit monitoring just gives you quicker notification_

Define "quicker."

I got the credit monitoring from Exerpan after its data breach.

Since then, I've had my credit run twice. Both times were initiated by me, so
I know when it happened. Both times, I received a notification by e-mail SEVEN
DAYS later, followed by a text message a day after that.

Seven days is plenty long enough to destroy someone's finances.

------
teeray
The entire concept of "freezing" and "unfreezing" needs to go away. It should
be inaccessible by default, except by a time-limited token generated by the
person applying for credit.

~~~
ihattendorf
I agree, but how should that person generate a token? A hardware device? What
if they lose that device? Try and think of it from the perspective of someone
who only uses their computer for facebook/banking/candy crush.

~~~
wolfgang42
No computer needed: when you freeze your credit, the agency mails you a sheet
of one-time-use codes. When you apply for credit, you give the bank or whoever
one of the codes, and then cross it off of your sheet.

If you lose the paper, you have to go through a manual process to get a new
one, the same as you would if you lost the PIN they give you now.

~~~
geezerjay
> If you lose the paper, you have to go through a manual process to get a new
> one, the same as you would if you lost the PIN they give you now.

If an attacker has your identity then he might have access to that unlocking
process. Thus, how does this strategy changes anything?

~~~
wolfgang42
> he _might_ have access to that unlocking process.

Emphasis added. It stops the attackers that don't have this information, thus
raising the bar. I'm not trying to invent a perfect system, just a better one
that's practical to implement.

------
tuxxy
The fact that this cost consumers money is such an obvious symptom of a larger
problem.

In case anyone hasn't seen this twitter thread before:
[https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/906257077215133696](https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/906257077215133696)

The history of credit companies like Equifax are extremely dystopian. We
should be working to find replacements for such systems.

~~~
jtr_47
We don't need replacements. We need to eliminate these companies.

~~~
komali2
I'm all for these companies burning to the ground (after the building has been
emptied). I'm also all about a currency-less society.

But until we reduce scarcity to a point where that is possible, presumably
lenders need some way to evaluate the "trustworthiness" of who they're lending
to, yea? How should it be done? My first thought is an agency like the irs is
set up to handle it.

~~~
Retric
Loans don't necessarily make things more affordable. If 'nobody' could pay 1+
million for a home in a major city then home prices would drop until people
could afford them.

If anything credit agency's actively harm the middle class by allowing people
to extract as much money from them as possible via higher prices.

Sure, business loans are very useful but they don't require credit agency's.

~~~
freehunter
Prices can only drop so far, though. (Warning: completely hypothetical numbers
inbound... they're just being used to illustrate the point, not for gauging
real costs)

If a 2x4 costs $20 and you need 2000 of them to build a house, the house has
to cost at least $40,000. And if pieces of siding cost $20 and you need 1000
of them, then that house has to cost $60,000. That's going to be hard to
afford out of pocket. You can save the same amount of a mortgage payment every
month, but you still need a place to live in the meantime so you're doubling
your cost of living until you fork over the $60,000 in cash.

And you might say the cost of a 2x4 would come down too, but if a lumberjack
is making $15/hr and makes one 2x4 every hour, then the cost of that 2x4 can
only be $5 cheaper before that lumberjack is getting paid more than the value
of his work. And you might say the lumberjack could get paid less, but at
$15/hr he already needs to work 4,000 hours before he can afford to buy that
$60,000 house (assuming no other expenses).

That's two years of savings before he can buy a house, with no money for food,
no money for an apartment, no money for a car. If you cut his wages to make
the house cheaper, now he has to work longer before he can buy a house. And
since no one can afford the house anyway, he'll likely be laid off before he
saves enough money because no one can buy the lumber because no one can buy
the house built from it.

And of course, this is all ignoring that none of these businesses are making
any money in this entire hypothetical situation. If we didn't have home loans,
the cost of housing would go down, but it would still be completely
unaffordable without a loan even if the builder was losing money.

~~~
Retric
Rather than paying less per hour or less for lumber people would end up with
smaller homes. A 40k down payment on a 200,000$ house already pays for a
significant structure. Not marble countertops, but perfectly livable if small.

Further, as the buyer would not have a mortgage they could upgrade from a
‘starter’ home. But, only if they actually felt the need and saved up even
more cash.

------
kgwxd
Wouldn't be necessary if we had a law that makes the banks liable for getting
defrauded instead of the individual who's name, and other publicly available
"secret" information, happens to be used to do it.

~~~
adrr
Banks are liable. If a fraudster steals someone identity and setups a bunch of
credit cards and/or loans, the bank eats the loss. This is protected in
contract law because the bank doesn’t have a valid contract with the victim.

~~~
kgwxd
Are they held liable for the pain and suffering that ensues? Are they forced
to fix the persons credit score? They need to be punished for it, not just eat
the loss. They make up the loss by charging insane interest rates, late fees
and service fees. There should be jail time and personal responsibility.

~~~
adrr
If you want pain and suffering. Have someone steal your identity when they get
arrested.

I have had my identity stolen, I just disputed accounts on my credit report.
It took me about an hour. The 3 credit cards companies and two cell companies
lost about $25k total. If debt collectors call, tell them to prove the debt
which they can't do so they go away.

------
EGreg
You know what they should pass a law to do?

For you to set up a SECOND FACTOR AUTHENTICATION where you would approve
before some new credit account is reported. Maybe even for a credit check.

    
    
      1. Apply for credit
      2. They check your report
      3. They make an offer
      4. You review the offer
      5. You endorse it
      6. They submit to bureau
      7. Bureau sends you a text
      or to their app om your phone
      with details of offer
    

You can endorse at step 6 by a cryptographic signature or at step 7 use Authy,
text or the bureau’s app.

How hard is that??? Seriously!! We have Google Authenticator for bank accounts
but not credit bureaus?

It would be strictly opt-in so those who care about identity theft CAN make
sure to prevent it.

~~~
mjevans
Would it be possible to require the use of an OpenPGP or other actual
cryptographic identity that matches a whitelist of keys I or a government
agency provides for anything more major than a typical shopping trip to the
grocery store / Costco?

Phone numbers and cell phones are too easy to have redirected; so an actual
cryptographic ID is required. That's why I want the government to sign off on
personal IDs when /they/ confirm my ID at drivers/identification license
updates.

------
nnq
When will people realize that the whole idea of a "credit score" is _insanely
bad_ \- just lend to anyone under the same conditions, do personal checks on
case by case basis etc. There are parts of the world that have all regular
financial tools like mortgages and all without the credit score part. Keeping
a "score" is just a means of discrimination and oppression.

Yeah, credit will become more expensive, as _it should be!_ People should only
lend money with verified collateral etc. And maybe it's not "fair" to lend
anyone at the same rate, just as it's not "fair" to have "universal" health
insurance. But you know what? F fairness! Nobody needs "fair", we need
_systems that work_ , and do so _reliably_ and in _easily understandable ways_
, making the word a place you would want to live in.

We can afford to de-optimize some aspects of the economy in order to get a
better quality of life with low stress and all. _Equality_ and _anonymity_ is
what everyone needs more of, not "fairness" and invasion of privacy (aka
"transparency"), with the former usually used to justify the latter.

~~~
astura
So you think requiring someone to have _verified collateral_ to take out a
loan is _less_ oppressive than allowing someone who doesn't have any
collateral to use solely their reputation to borrow money very cheaply?

Your hypothetical system makes financial products only available to wealthy.
That's pretty much the definition of oppressive. A system where more people
have more access to more products is the fairer one.

Debt can be an important tool if used correctly.

~~~
astura
And without collateral you clearly can't loan to _everyone_ because this is
what happens:

Borrow money at 1000% interest

Don't make any payments. What are they going to do? Sue me? I can't pay, I'm
in debt. Hookers and blow for everyone.

Borrow more money at 1000% interest. They can't say no!!! Debt for everyone!!

Make Payments? Lol.

Borrow more money. Don't make payments.

Borrow more money. Don't make payments.

Continue on forever. It's a money spigot.

Nobody would be willing to lend to anyone in this situation without serious
collateral and only at very high rates and limited to low risk loans.

Reinstituting debtors prison would be the only fix for this problem. And
that's 10000 times more oppressive than credit scores.

Don't lend to people in debt? Congratulations, now you're back to credit
scores!

------
frankydp
If my credit card company can call and text me while I stand at the Point of
Sale for an high risk approval, why then can these folks not do the same.

It should be the default behavior.

Now the challenging and arguable more difficult thing would be debt
collection.

Edit: The short answer is because the consumers are not the customers.

------
hnburnsy
Don't forget Innovis and CheckSystems. Great information here.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-
free-...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-let-the-
ice-age-begin/)

~~~
lockes5hadow
There is also NCTUE

Freeze page - [http://www.nctue.com/Consumers](http://www.nctue.com/Consumers)

------
albertop
Freeze cost is only one part. Not mentioned in this article are costs of
temporary unfreeze. TransUnion used to/still does charge $10 for each
unfreeze.

~~~
sp332
The article says unfreezes should also be free now.

------
bogomipz
>"Placing a freeze should be fast and relatively easy, although you will have
to sign up for separate ones at each of the three credit bureaus."

This is so broken. Freezing your credit at one should automatically freeze
your credit at all of them. This functionality already exists for providing a
90 day lock on your profile. Making people jump through 3 sets of hoops to
freeze and unfreeze their credit is a joke. I'm guessing this was law makers
capitulating to the will of the industry instead of the consumer. Sadly no
surprise there.

>"If the credit bureaus cannot sufficiently verify your identity based on the
information you've provided, you may need to mail in copies of your driver's
license, utility bills or other supporting documentation to validate your
identity and execute a freeze."

What constitutes "sufficiently" can be arbitrarily obscure. Examples of this
include. The number of a landline you had 20 years ago, the zip code of a
company that bought a now defunct company you used to work for. Your only
recourse is snail male and making photocopies of sensitive documents and
mailing them to a P.O box somewhere. These same "verification" systems also
randomly report failure during the process leaving the consumer with no choice
but to snail male.

"We want to make it is as simple as possible to access that freeze, but we
want to protect you at the same time," Experian's Griffin said. "We need to
strike that balance."

This is nonsense and nobody believes this for a minute. This shady industry
finally got called to account albeit in a quite limited way and they will do
everything possible to make this as inefficient as possible. There may be a
law on the books now that they can't charge but there is no law that says
these systems need to be maintained, verified to be working or efficient.

------
dsfyu404ed
Too bad this wasn't in place about a year ago when I was freezing my credit
because of Equifax and getting temporary thaws to apply for a mortgage.

------
40acres
I was able to freeze my credit w/ TransUnion and Experian easily this morning.
However with Equifax I got a vague error stating that they could not process
my request. After taking a look at the equivalent thread on /r/personalfinance
I think someone may have preemptively frozen my account with my data that was
exposed as apart of the hack. I guess I need to contact Equifax by phone now.
A bit frustrating but locking down 2/3 isn't bad for 15 minutes of work.

~~~
elbac
Experian keeps asking me to pay for this feature. Where did you find it?

------
usermac
What is the benefit of freezing your credit?

~~~
criddell
Somebody pretending to be you can't borrow money in your name.

~~~
astura
They can, if the lender doesn't do a credit check, its just that most lenders
won't loan to someone without first checking their credit file. Someone can
run up medical debt in your name, since doctors don't do credit checks.

------
etatoby
Can anybody explain what this is about and what a "credit report" is?

I've owned and used bank accounts and credit cards for my entire adult life,
that is to say, several decades (in the EU) and I've never come across this
concept.

~~~
oehpr
I might be getting your question wrong here but have a listen to this podcast:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/10/06/556212654/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/10/06/556212654/episode-798-bad-
credit-bureau)

I'll give you a quick summary version based on this though.

Business owners were looking for a way to tell if the person standing in front
of them will likely pay them back. So Businesses go to companies like Equifax
that try build credit reports on people and basically ask "can I trust john
smith?". Essentially they're big time data brokers.

The thing is that when you created and owned accounts with banks and
established credit cards, the whole time those banks were funneling your
activities to companies like Equifax, who then build these credit reports
against you. So even if you never interacted with them, your banks likely told
them everything about you.

This kind of thing is something you only really find out about if you go
looking for it.

~~~
etatoby
Ohh... _that 's_ what Equifax does! I could never figure it out from the news
articles. Thanks for the link, I'll listen to it.

You're right, I don't think I want to go looking into my own reports, until
(if ever) I need to.

“Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.”

------
kimsk112
If you have kids, you might want to freeze their credit too. I listen to "The
Perfect Scam" podcast, and they said that thief now prefers to steal kid or
teenager identities since they can milk their account longer.

------
jumbopapa
Freezing my credit still allows it to improve based on my existing lines of
credit, correct?

~~~
caleblloyd
I have mine frozen and my credit scores on Credit Karma are still visible and
change monthly. Credit Karma lists Equifax and TransUnion scores.

~~~
jumbopapa
Perfect. I suppose that I will go ahead and freeze mine as I don't foresee any
need to apply for credit in the near future.

