| Credit Report Freeze Broadens |
| By Credit Federal |
Published
10/21/2007
|
Credit Report
|
|
|
|
|
Equifax, Transunion and Experian Credit Report Freeze
Sometime this year, all three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) will let people in all 50 states place credit report freezes. For those who want to take action to protect against identity theft, the credit report freeze offers a strong tool.
Order your credit report so you can check for and fix errors you may find. Each credit bureau; Equifax, Transunion and Experian, may report differently and have different scores. Use our free credit check to gauge how well you are currently managing your credit.
Until now, various laws in 39 of 50 states were the limited choices consumers had to protect themselves. The new, nation wide freeze by all bureaus in all states will greatly boost identity protection efforts.
"This is very significant for consumers who live in the 11 states without freeze laws and the four states with limited laws," says Jeannine Kenney, a senior policy analyst at Consumers Union.
How it works: When a consumer places a credit report freeze, the freeze bars the credit report bureaus from revealing the credit history (history of loans, credit cards, late payments, score, etc). Since most lenders require being able to review the applicant's credit report before approving a line of credit (loan or credit card), placing a credit report freeze means identity thieves can't use stolen Social Security numbers to fraudulently open accounts.
According to Experian, a credit report freeze will be free for victims of identity theft, but otherwise has a $10 fee as well as an additional $10 fee to unfreeze the report unless a lower fee is mandated by state law. A freeze can be requested by letter and unfrozen by email, phone or letter.
Consumers Union says the fee should be no more than $5 to impose a freeze or temporarily suspend it and nothing to permanently lift a freeze. States with the most consumer friendly laws typically charge $5. Experian claims their fee structure is to recover operating costs, not to make a profit.
Over 1 million stolen Social Security numbers are on computer servers controlled by criminals, says Cyveillance, a security firm that crawls the Internet looking for tainted websites. Consumers Union, AARP and other consumer advocates have pressed states the past few years to adopt credit freeze laws, while facing opposition from lobbyists representing the three major credit bureaus.
|
Related Articles
Email this article to a friend - click here
Webmasters: Free Credit Content for Your Website!
Multiple ways to use our financial content:
*) You can use our RSS Feeds for automatic insertion and updates
*) You can simply link to this article
