Posted: 2/1/2026 9:49:08 AM EDT
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Credit score over 800. have all the credit cards i need, too many actually has anyone frozen their credit with all 3 companies and can share their experience afterwards |
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Originally Posted By -Obsessed-: We fixed our credit years ago. We temporarily unfreeze it only when necessary. Nothing really to report. I guess it works? Same, no issues. Best protection you can make.  Originally Posted By cruze5: how complicated is it to unfreeze for all the companies or can you do this online Website, punch the code in, unlocked. DO NOT LOSE THE PASSWORD/CODE |
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Non Solis radios sed Iovis fulmina mitto
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I've had mine frozen for about a decade at all 3 credit bureaus. I periodically have to unfreeze it if I want to open up a new line of credit. Applying for a mortgage, refinance, the lay-z-boy 0% memorial day sale, opening the home depot card. The only annoying part about that is when you are standing at the counter at home depot and know you need to unfreeze it, but they can't tell you which of the 3 credit bureaus they use to look it up so you'll know which one to unfreeze. Some lines of credit do not require a credit check, like some of the buy-no-pay-later things like affirm. You can open an affirm even with your credit frozen at all 3 bureaus. While you're at it, consider doing the national opt-out of prescreened credit offers, which also cuts down on your junk mail. And there's a similar one to opt out of most junk mail. As far as unfreezing, its just logging into each of the websites and finding the button to unfreeze. You need to be able to remember the URL, your login info, and then navigate the website which may change from time to time. For 3 different websites. |
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As noted above, it's trivial to unlock, provided you don't lose your PIN. Otherwise it will take some time, while they snail mail you a code. That said, I haven't needed to unlock ours in years, because our situation is fairly static. We're not applying for new credit cards or mortgages routinely, and generally don't finance vehicles. Has not seemed to hurt my credit score.  
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| Looks like some of the folks in the thread are running on outdated information. You can temporarily lift (thaw) a credit freeze at transunion, experian, and equifax without any of them requiring a PIN. I just verified all 3 of them before making this post. The PIN was the old way of doing it, and it was stupid as fuck, because it was literally just a time stamp of when you froze your credit. It was fairly easily (in computer/cryptographic terms) guessable at all 3 bureaus. |
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Mine have been frozen ever since the AT&T thing, my identity is good & stolen, so I have to keep everything locked. I have bank and utility locks as well thanks to AT&T. From an old thread: FYI - There are actually FOUR companies you need to freeze your credit with. I'm on my phone, so I cut and pasted what I posted in a thread about two years ago, which is still correct today. Here it is (from a post I did a year or two ago): If you want to protect yourself from identity theft, place a FREEZE (not to be confused with a fraud alert which is completely worthless) on all FOUR of your credit reports. It is 100% FREE and will not impact any current accounts you have. If someone tries to run your credit to open a new account it will show a freeze is in place and prevent them from opening the account. If you want to get a new credit card, mortgage, auto loan, etc. all you need to do is temporarily lift it with each credit bureau, which can be done by you in just a few minutes on-line. https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/ https://www.innovis.com/personal/securityFreeze |
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Originally Posted By giantpune: Looks like some of the folks in the thread are running on outdated information. You can temporarily lift (thaw) a credit freeze at transunion, experian, and equifax without any of them requiring a PIN. I just verified all 3 of them before making this post. The PIN was the old way of doing it, and it was stupid as fuck, because it was literally just a time stamp of when you froze your credit. It was fairly easily (in computer/cryptographic terms) guessable at all 3 bureaus. Guilty. As noted, I haven't felt the need to unlock ours in years. I do have a set of credentials for each one of the four bureaus mentioned in this thread, but I don't recall if they also hit you with something else, like MFA. |
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Originally Posted By cruze5: how complicated is it to unfreeze for all the companies or can you do this online This is why I unfroze it. I ran into too many issues where I was trying to do something and couldn't unfreeze it. Experian was the worst. Couldn't get their fucking website to work to allow me to unfreeze it while I'm in the middle of a transaction and good luck talking to a person. On another occasion, though, (don't remember the company) the wife was buying a new vehicle. She called me while I was at a restaurant eating a burger, I unfroze it, they ran the check, and I froze it again. So ymmv. |
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Originally Posted By cruze5: Credit score over 800. have all the credit cards i need, too many actually has anyone frozen their credit with all |
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No rules today, sport…just orders.
It’s not about how many people you kill, it’s about how many you save.
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Originally Posted By scuba_steve: Guilty. As noted, I haven't felt the need to unlock ours in years. I do have a set of credentials for each one of the four bureaus mentioned in this thread, but I don't recall if they also hit you with something else, like MFA. When I tested it out earlier, only equifax fired off an MFA SMS. It was for the login, not the unfreeze. All 3 of them fired off a confirmation email letting me at least know the freeze was lifted. |
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A couple of years ago there was a fantastic write up on how to freeze credit. It had a way to 1. Freezer credit with all three agencies. 2. How to freeze your cell phone number. 3. Home title 4. Something else. It was all freely available services (by the credit agencies). I followed it to the letter. |
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Joined:
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OH, USA
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As others have said. We lived and worked overseas. Had our Personal and Corporate Credit Cards compromised many times. Froze them all a long Just a phone call and/or online simple task to unfreeze if need be. Fuck be upon all Scammers and Thieves. |
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Originally Posted By gamboolman: As others have said. We lived and worked overseas. Had our Personal and Corporate Credit Cards compromised many times. Froze them all a long Just a phone call and/or online simple task to unfreeze if need be. Fuck be upon all Scammers and Thieves. Explain how freezing your credit with the reporting agencies will help protect you against your existing credit cards being compromised? |
Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty
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Originally Posted By FALARAK: Explain how freezing your credit with the reporting agencies will help protect you against your existing credit cards being compromised? Yeah, I don't get that either, but on that subject, a Capital One credit card rocks. They let you generate vendor-specific virtual credit card numbers, with an optional auto-lock date. If one of them is compromised, the blast radius is limited to just that virtual credit card number, and you then also know what vendor compromised it. It's a manual process on mobile, but they have a plug-in for desktop browsers that offers to create one automatically on any page with credit card fields. |
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Originally Posted By giantpune: Why would that be concerning? The credit bureaus' entire business model is to sell your personal information to other companies. That's why. I got 2 done, Experian wants me to snail mail 87 documents to create a login. Seems less secure than not doing it. |
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Originally Posted By AR_Dale: That's why. I got 2 done, Experian wants me to snail mail 87 documents to create a login. Seems less secure than not doing it. How do you figure? They already know everything about you. Companies are already snail mailing out credit card offers in your name. I didn't have to do any of that bullshit when I did it, though. I guess i was able to verify my identity enough online without having to mail shit in. |
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Originally Posted By giantpune: How do you figure? They already know everything about you. Companies are already snail mailing out credit card offers in your name. I didn't have to do any of that bullshit when I did it, though. I guess i was able to verify my identity enough online without having to mail shit in. The only thing they ask is last 4 of SS and phone # then says unable to verify. ETA: see below Same address for 30 years, same phone # for 27 years, same job for 26 years, same wife for 25 years. My son gets those snail mail offers and they know nothing about him. He has no score at all, none. He replied to several of them and they all denied him. Chase wouldn't even let him open a checking account with no credit record. Which is required to get the student credit builder credit card they recommended for him. His own bank turned him down for a secured credit card. He has banked there for 3 years, makes over $50k a year. Attached File Attached File |
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Originally Posted By FALARAK: I never freeze mine. Never saw a reason to. I have credit monitoring for free with creditkarma, equifax, and experian.... they send me emails anytime ANYTHING changes.... so why bother? Your method tells you when something changes. The credit freeze doesn’t allow that change to occur. I prefer the freeze method. |
Words fall from your mouth like shit from ass.
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Originally Posted By Steamedliver: Your method tells you when something changes. The credit freeze doesn’t allow that change to occur. I prefer the freeze method. Originally Posted By Steamedliver: Originally Posted By FALARAK: I never freeze mine. Never saw a reason to. I have credit monitoring for free with creditkarma, equifax, and experian.... they send me emails anytime ANYTHING changes.... so why bother? Your method tells you when something changes. The credit freeze doesn’t allow that change to occur. I prefer the freeze method. In 36 years of having a credit report, I have never had anything change without me doing it. I suppose if I felt identity fraud was that possible and rampant, or had already happened to me, I might feel differently. I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with freezing it.... I just have never seen a benefit personally. |
Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty --Charlie Munger
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I've never done it but I've had a bunch of customers that have done it. When they want it unfrozen they make a phone call and in the time it takes me to do a credit application and hit the submit button it's unfrozen, the bank checks their credit, and once the approval is sent I call the customer and they relock it. |
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Locking your credit with the agencies is a must. My former health insurer was hacked back in 2014 and ever since I have fraudulent attempts to open credit cards etc. with my info. Last was 2 months ago. LifeLock (free through my current employer) flagged it, credit freeze prevented it, and it was reported to the bank as fraud. It's not if your info will be compromised, but when! |
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i don’t normally install apple apps. but i did temporarily to see what they offer. its interesting that 2 out of 3 offer passkey support. id highly suggest you use them myequifax and experian support them. trans won’t let you login with a “Free” account so i could not see if it used them or not i could not setup a passkey on the website. only using the app which to me is odd thumbs ups |
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Originally Posted By FALARAK: In 36 years of having a credit report, I have never had anything change without me doing it. I suppose if I felt identity fraud was that possible and rampant, or had already happened to me, I might feel differently. I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with freezing it.... I just have never seen a benefit personally. Statistically it’s a low probability event. If the event occurs, the downside is tremendous. |
Words fall from your mouth like shit from ass.
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This thread was a good reminder to check my frozen credit status. Froze the big 3 back in 2015 and they were still doing the PIN method to unlock. I haven't had new credit since then. Going back and checking my accounts, I didn't have a valid way to log into the account, so created a new account. Transunion and Equfax still showed my credit as frozen. As mentioned Experian was being a huge pain in the butt and couldn't confirm anything. Innovis was new to me and I am pretty sure they locked my credit for items they report on; need to wait for 10 days to be sure. ChexSystems was new to me and I need to get that one done. After going through these hoops, need to make damn sure you don't lose access to the email address and phone numbers linked to these accounts. |