How You Can Now Protect Your Credit For Free

November 26, 2018

Are you worried about identity theft? There’s no need to pay a monthly fee or even a one time fee for credit protection. As of this fall, you can now place and lift a security freeze on each of your credit reports (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) for free.

What exactly is a security freeze? A security or credit freeze prevents anyone from opening credit in your name without your PIN. Without a freeze, an identity thief could use stolen personal info to open credit and run up debt in your name, ruining your credit score.

Is there a downside to placing a security freeze? Now that it’s free, the only cost is the few minutes it takes to place the freeze and the few minutes it would take to temporarily lift the freeze and then restart it each time you apply for credit. Just be sure not to forget your PIN. 

How do you place the security freeze? You have to place it with each credit bureau individually. If you request it online or by phone, they have to place the freeze within one business day. If you request it by mail, they have to place it within 3 days of receiving the request. You can learn more, including the contact info for each credit bureau, here.

Is a security freeze all you need to protect your credit? First of all, it won’t address any bad info that’s already on any of your credit reports. (It’s been estimated that about 70% of credit reports have errors on them that could be hurting people’s scores.) It’s bad enough to be penalized for your own mistakes so you certainly don’t want to be penalized for someone else’s. You can check your credit reports for free every 12 months at AnnualCreditReport.com and dispute any mistakes you see there that could be hurting you.

I would also suggest credit monitoring, which you can also get for free for all the bureaus through CreditKarma.com (which covers TransUnion and Equifax) and FreeCreditScore.com (which covers Experian). Credit monitoring lets you know if anything happens to your credit that a security freeze wouldn’t stop.

For example, I once had a doctor’s bill go to the wrong address so I never paid it. I got a notification from my credit monitoring service and was able to fix the problem without it even being reported on my credit report. Otherwise, the bill likely would have gone into collections and negatively impacted my credit.

What else should I know? Do it now. This is one of the things that’s easiest to procrastinate since there’s no immediate benefit. The problem is that you never know when you may need it and by then, it will be too late.