What is a credit freeze, and should you use it?
With temps coming down as we move closer to winter, maybe that’s a nice segue to the topic of freezing your…credit.
Why the Concern? My Experience with a Security Breach
On August 26th, I woke up to eight email alerts stating that my Social Security number was found on the dark web by a monitoring service I got for free for 12 months, like all of us now do when our data is exposed in an institutional breach. I included a screenshot below of the email I saw eight times to start my Monday morning.
A Reminder from the Wall Street Journal
Then I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal a few days later which I unlocked for you here: Don’t Wait for the Next Big Data Breach to Freeze Your Credit
The back-to-back timing inspired me to learn more about what’s involved in freezing our credit and potentially move to freeze it…which I did.
The Benefits of Freezing Your Credit
Following a Federal law change in 2018 after Equifax’s massive data breach, it’s now FREE and simpler to freeze and unfreeze our credit reports as often as we want. This creates an additional layer of protection should someone try to use your stolen identity to create financial accounts that you have no knowledge about until it’s too late and then you have to prove that it wasn’t you that opened the account.
How & Where to Freeze Your Credit (For Free!)
If you’d like to freeze your credit – which I’d highly recommend – here are the links to each of the three credit reporting agencies where you can put a freeze into place. Remember, it’s free so you don’t need to enroll into any package service they might also offer you to get this in place.
Hope this info helps keep your financial assets safe. I’m always happy to address any questions you may have.
