Security Freeze Information

Recently, I signed up for Equifax’s Trusted ID Premier. Unfortunately, that alone does not do an adequate job of protecting you from the recent data breach. What it does do for only one year is:

  • 3-bureau credit report monitoring
  • Copies of your Equifax credit report
  • Ability to lock and unlock your Equifax credit file [To this day I cannot understand the difference between a freeze and a lock]
  • Social security number monitoring [This is on the dark web but is likely to be spotty at best]
  • $1 million identity theft insurance

Equifax also has announced that it will roll out a new program by January 31, 2018 that may make the freeze option permanent as well as other things.

Meanwhile, however, as pointed out by my friend Howie, you remain exposed with the other reporting agencies. Therefore, I have provided a list below of the other credit reporting agencies and their phone numbers/web sites. I just locked my credit on all of those sites (as well as my wife’s). In total, it took about ten minutes for all of them together. I advise that you do it to!

 

Equifax — 1-800-349-9960
https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp

Experian — 1‑888‑397‑3742
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

TransUnion — 1-888-909-8872
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze/place-credit-freeze2

Innovis 1-800-540-2505
https://www.innovis.com/personal/securityFreeze

Chexsystems   1-800.887.7652
https://www.chexsystems.com/web/chexsystems/consumerdebit/page/securityfreeze