You just finished all your Black Friday shopping and news breaks that thousands of consumers’ personal information, debit cards and credit cards have been compromised by a store, restaurant or website you recently shopped at. What do you do? One step you can take is to consider placing a credit freeze on your credit bureau accounts. Placing a credit freeze on your account is a free tool that lets you restrict access to your credit report, preventing fraudulent accounts from being opened using your personal information.
A credit freeze does not affect your credit score and also does not permanently:
- Prevent pulling your annual free credit report
- Prevent you from opening a new account
- Affect you applying for a job
- Affect you renting an apartment
- Affect you buying insurance
The only difference is, to do any of the above you will need to lift the freeze temporarily, but doing so is free as well as reinstating the freeze afterwards. The credit freeze will remain in effect until you contact the credit bureaus to remove the freeze again or permanently.
To place a freeze on your credit reports you will need to contact all of the below credit bureaus:
- Equifax
com/personal/credit-report-services
800-685-1111 - Experian
com/help
888-EXPERIAN (888-397-3742) - Transunion
com/credit-help
888-909-8872
Your financial security is of the utmost importance to us. Visit our security center page for current fraud happenings as well as our quarterly Security Spotlight Newsletter.