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Credit Freezes: Now Everyone Can Chill a Credit File

Last week brought the welcome news that all three of the companies that track your credit history are going to start letting you freeze your credit file, no matter where you live in the U.S.

Credit freezes are the closest thing we have to a silver bullet against identity theft. Once your account is frozen, no new creditors can check you out unless you go back in and thaw the account temporarily with a special code.

Banks and credit-granting companies generally won’t open a new account in your name unless they can check the credit file. If a credit-card issuer can’t access the credit file (say, when a crook is trying to get a new card in your name), the card company simply won’t open the account.

My wife and I have had our files frozen for a year or so, ever since New York forced the credit-reporting agencies to let state residents freeze their files if they wanted to. It’s a big pain to get them frozen (we had to send some requests by certified mail) and a small pain to get them thawed temporarily (we have to use – and keep track of – a bunch of numerical codes).

But the point here is that we made the decision to erect these barriers. And we’re glad we did, despite the hassle. Identity theft is something we don’t lose a lot of sleep over anymore.

Should you get a freeze too? Many people deploy something milder called a fraud alert and think that’s plenty of protection. Others simply watch their bank statements carefully and get a free credit report every four months to make sure nothing weird is going on.

There’s no right answer here – except to this question: Should consumers have the ability to control access to their personal credit file?

For a while, the agencies seemed to think the answer was no. They fretted that consumers with freezes would be inconvenienced if they needed credit instantly, say at an auto dealer. So they lobbied fiercely all over the country against the sort of legislation that gave New Yorkers (and folks in a bunch of other states) the right to chill their credit files.

They’ve been defeated repeatedly. So rather than fight state by state, they’re now throwing in the towel and offering the freezes to everyone. It’s about time.

We’ll post links to the nationwide freeze pages for the three credit-reporting agencies — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — once they’re up and running in a month or so.

– Ron Lieber