Freeze Your Credit to Protect Against Identity Theft

To freeze your credit, you need to contact the three major credit monitoring services: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. You will need to create an account with each if you do not already have one. The entire process is free and takes about 20 minutes.

You can also freeze your credit over the phone without creating an account, but it may take longer.

• Experian(1-888-397-3742)
• TransUnion (1-800-916-8800)
• Equifax (1-800-349-9960)

You must contact all three companies.

It can be difficult to keep track of every data breach, but there is a good chance that your information has been compromised. In one recent breach, thieves stole 2.9 billion records from a company called National Public Data. This information included names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and home address history. You can check to see if your information was part of this breach by searching Pentester's database.

Other tools, such as have i been pwned?, may be able to tell you if you are a victim of other data breaches. You should check multiple databases to see if someone has stolen your data.

• Pentester has information on the National Public Data breach.
• have i been pwned? has information on various other data breaches.
• Many others

Freezing your credit stops new lenders from accessing your credit report. This makes it hard or impossible for someone to take out loans in your name. (If you want to apply for a loan or credit card, you will need to unfreeze your credit first.)

Freezing your credit does not stop everyone from seeing your credit report. Those who can still view a report for frozen credit may include:

• Your current creditors
• Credit monitoring services
• Government
• Background screening services
• Fraud prevention services
• Pre-approved credit and insurance providers (though you can opt out)

Yes. You can unfreeze your credit at no cost by contacting Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. You cannot apply for a loan or credit card while your credit is frozen.