PSA: I froze my credit @ all 3 agencies in 7 minutes

[ohgillian]

I asked in the questions thread about freezing my credit and went ahead to do it today. Like people said in that thread, it was not easy to find the links. I think I am pretty savvy and I still ended up filling out the form to get a paid TransUnion membership before it asked for my credit card # and I realized I was in the wrong spot. So, here are links for anyone else who wants to do this. If you're going to do it, you should do all 3 -- just doing one of them is not as helpful.


Transunion: www.transunion.com/credit-freeze (literally took 2 minutes; I timed it).

Experian: www.experian.com/freeze/center.html  (again literally 2 minutes)

Equifax: www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/  (This one took 3 minutes, b/c there were more steps, including getting texted a code).


So that's it. Technically it took me more than 7 minutes b/c of finding the TransUnion link, etc. I only added up the time that I was doing the right thing, not the time I spent finding the links. 

ETA Thanks dr.girlfriend for the initial link and the push. 

[freshsqueezed]

This must be a change from the past. When I did this a few years ago I had to print off forms and send them in to each one. This is great!

[ohgillian]

Jan 15, 2021 12:53:18 GMT -5 freshsqueezed said:

This must be a change from the past. When I did this a few years ago I had to print off forms and send them in to each one. This is great!

I feel like I did it in the early 2000s and it was ... not easy. This was a breeze today.

[savan]

Great! Also, when I had to unfreeze ours to refinance this summer, I was able to set it up so they automatically refroze after a certain amount of time.

[ohgillian]

Jan 15, 2021 13:14:29 GMT -5 savan said:

Great! Also, when I had to unfreeze ours to refinance this summer, I was able to set it up so they automatically refroze after a certain amount of time.

This is good to know. 

So do you unfreeze it before you begin an activity that would require a credit check? eg say I wanted a new credit card. I'd unfreeze, then apply? 

[savan]

Jan 15, 2021 13:18:24 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

Jan 15, 2021 13:14:29 GMT -5 savan said:

Great! Also, when I had to unfreeze ours to refinance this summer, I was able to set it up so they automatically refroze after a certain amount of time.

This is good to know. 

So do you unfreeze it before you begin an activity that would require a credit check? eg say I wanted a new credit card. I'd unfreeze, then apply? 

 
Yes.  I think I might have started the application with our credit union and, once I was sure we were going forward, I unfroze it.  

We did have one time where we went to a car dealership to look at a car and they couldn't give us loan rates because our credit was frozen.  We opted not to finance in the end so I never unfroze, but also something to remember.

[freshsqueezed]

Jan 15, 2021 13:18:24 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

Jan 15, 2021 13:14:29 GMT -5 savan said:

Great! Also, when I had to unfreeze ours to refinance this summer, I was able to set it up so they automatically refroze after a certain amount of time.

This is good to know. 

So do you unfreeze it before you begin an activity that would require a credit check? eg say I wanted a new credit card. I'd unfreeze, then apply? 

I have already done this twice and it is a breeze to unfreeze (assuming you keep your password handy).  Like the other posted said, you go in and unfreeze and set a date to refreeze automatically.  It is great.  We only froze my credit and our children's but this thread has me inspired to tell my husband to do so too.  So easy to freeze and unfreeze instead of worrying about stolen credit, etc.

[10nille]

If I post I will be able to find this when I need the info, thanks

[dr.girlfriend]

Jan 15, 2021 12:41:51 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

I asked in the questions thread about freezing my credit and went ahead to do it today. Like people said in that thread, it was not easy to find the links. I think I am pretty savvy and I still ended up filling out the form to get a paid TransUnion membership before it asked for my credit card # and I realized I was in the wrong spot. So, here are links for anyone else who wants to do this. If you're going to do it, you should do all 3 -- just doing one of them is not as helpful.


Transunion: www.transunion.com/credit-freeze (literally took 2 minutes; I timed it).

Experian: www.experian.com/freeze/center.html  (again literally 2 minutes)

Equifax: www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/  (This one took 3 minutes, b/c there were more steps, including getting texted a code).


So that's it. Technically it took me more than 7 minutes b/c of finding the TransUnion link, etc. I only added up the time that I was doing the right thing, not the time I spent finding the links. 

ETA Thanks dr.girlfriend for the initial link and the push. 

Yay!  Glad it was easy.  Yeah, now that I am remembering more I think it was Equifax that was our problem too, because they wanted to send the code to that phone that my mom got scammed on and I had her send it to me because I couldn't trust her not to answer it again and it was still lost in the UPS system at the time we did all this.

[lust2hart]

Jan 15, 2021 14:32:57 GMT -5 10nille said:

If I post I will be able to find this when I need the info, thanks

Yes, since you posted in the thread you can find it again if you go into your profile and look at your posts.

But there's also a way to bookmark a thread and you don't have to post in it - Once you're in a post, in the upper right corner (next to the Search bar) you'll see a dropdown menu for Actions, and one of the actions is to Bookmark. Then when you want to find the thread later, you can go to the Bookmarks link at the top of the page (in the blue bar). 

Note: These are instructions for the website. I don't use the app so am not sure if the steps are the same through there. 

[ohgillian]

Feb 1, 2021 16:20:31 GMT -5 lust2hart said:

Jan 15, 2021 14:32:57 GMT -5 10nille said:

If I post I will be able to find this when I need the info, thanks

Yes, since you posted in the thread you can find it again if you go into your profile and look at your posts.

But there's also a way to bookmark a thread and you don't have to post in it - Once you're in a post, in the upper right corner (next to the Search bar) you'll see a dropdown menu for Actions, and one of the actions is to Bookmark. Then when you want to find the thread later, you can go to the Bookmarks link at the top of the page (in the blue bar). 

Note: These are instructions for the website. I don't use the app so am not sure if the steps are the same through there. 

Huh. Who knew.