Freezing your credit

Helpful instructions on freezing your credit with all three credit bureaus...

Given recent data leaks like the ~2.9 billion social security number record dump: https://hackread.com/data-breach-national-public-data-records-ssns-dumped/

You may wish to check if your Social security number was involved in the breach by going here: https://npd.pentester.com/

If it was, you might consider locking your credit with all 3 major credit bureaus, this is good practice when not using your credit anyway.

The bureaus are Experian, Transunion and Equifax

Freezing your credit by Phone

One method of freezing your credit is to contact the reporting agencies directly by phone and ask them to freeze it.

Their contact numbers are as follows:

Experian: 1-888-397-3742 Transunion: 1-800-916-8800 Equifax: 1-888-298-0045

Freezing your credit using credit Bureau websites:

Here are instructions for freezing your credit on all 3 sites. Beware of their ads, they are always trying to upsell their other services.

Experian instructions

1. Create an Experian account: https://usa.experian.com/
2. Login and ignore all their upsell ads.
3. Go to their credit freeze page: https://usa.experian.com/mfe/regulatory/security-freeze
4. Slide the button on screen to freeze your credit

Transunion instructions

1. Create a Transunion account: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
2. Go to there freeze status page: https://service.transunion.com/dss/freezeStatus.page?
3. Proceed with the instructions on screen to implement a freeze.

Equifax instructions

1. Create an Equifax account: https://my.equifax.com/ Go to login (this avoids their ads for services) and then select 'Register now'. Their sites a bit prone to failure. If account creation using a browser fails on your computer, goto their site from their mobile phone.
2. Choose login and create and account (again watch out for their ads trying to upsell you). Reliability is a bit hit or miss, but its important you get all three bureaus so stick with it.
3. Proceed with the instructions on screen, it will be obvious, look for Freeze, then select the option to freeze your credit.

Remember all three sites make money off their additional services - not that they are bad - just be careful when creating your account.