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What is credit report locking?
Shopping both in stores and especially online has opened a new world to us one with a whole new world of purchasing opportunities, and a whole new world of fear. Each time the news reports that another company has been breached, the banks information that the company stores on its customers in now lost or stolen. Now you can /“lock/" your credit reports to protect against the most damaging type of identity theft, known as /“new account/” identity theft, this type of fraud happens when someone steals information about you such as your social security number and uses it to open a new account in your name. Odds are you won’t even know about the fraudulent account for many months, or years. By this time your credit report and credit score can be in shambles if the said thief has run up and not repaid the charges on the fraudulent credit account. Since the account is in your name it is you financial reputation that is ruined.
What can I do?
There are a numerous ways of going about protecting yourself from different types of identity theft.
Now, a growing number of states allow you lock your credit reports, and completely eliminate the risk of new account identity theft. The steps you should take are as follows. You will first need to confirm that you are in a state that allows you to “freeze” your credit. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Washington all allow you to freeze your credit. Next you need to check if you are in a state that requires you to already be an identity theft victim. This is true in Texas, Vermont, Illinois, and Washington. In order to initiate a credit freeze you must contact all three of the major credit reporting agencies. The fee tied to this differs from state to state. In states that do not dictate more favorable pricing the cost to freeze a credit report in $10.00 and unfreezing it is the same. Some states will waive the fee for identity theft victims. Late in 2007 the major credit reporting bureaus unveiled “online” credit freezing capabilities, for customers of their credit monitoring services. If the consumer is applying for credit, he or she can temporarily lift the freeze by using a PIN so legitimate credit applications for credit can be processed.
Identity thieves will stop at nothing to get the information that they need to ruin your credit. Knowing that you can apply a credit report lock or credit freeze is a breath of fresh air. There are over 8 million new victims of identity theft each year in the United States. Many of these people have come to discover that thieves have stolen very personal information like your Social Security numbers so that they could open new accounts in their victim’s name, thus ruining their credit by running up the bills and not repaying them. A credit report lock or credit freeze gives consumers the choice to lock down access to their credit file against anyone trying to open a new account in their name.
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Request a copy of your credit reports. There are 3 major credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. |
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Check your report carefully. Check for errors to to be corrected. |
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Contact the credit reporting agency with a registered letter and by calling them. They'll ask you to show proof of the error. |
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What is a credit report?