Transunion and Equifax Expand Credit Freeze Programs to All 50 States

September 28th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under • by admin

With the growing supply of information in the digital age and the ease of getting credit approved in the United States, con artists are stealing money from people and banks by means of identity theft at alarming rates. In the past consumers were very poorly equipped to prevent becoming the victims from such crimes. The onset of identity theft protection plans, such as the ones offered by LifeLock and Zander Insurance, have been helpful to consumers however they haven’t been completely effective in stopping occurrences of identity theft. There has been one tool that consumers in some states have had, freezing your credit, and now it’s becoming available to consumers in all 50 states.

The premise behind freezing your credit is that no lenders will be able to access your credit score or report. If they can’t access it and get information about your past debts, they will not issue any credit because they have no idea if you will pay it back. This means that if someone steals your identity, it won’t do them any good because there’s no good credit to go with it. When you decide you do need to take out additional credit again, you can go un-freeze your credit report making it so that lenders can gain access to it again. After you’ve secured the credit you need, you can go back and freeze it again so that no one can see it.

State governments have been leading the way in mandating that the three major credit bureaus allow individuals to freeze their credit. In fact nearly 40 states have some credit-freeze laws on the books, but that doesn’t do much good to the individuals who live in a state that doesn’t offer such protection.

Fortunately, there’s good news for consumers who don’t live in a state with a credit-freeze law on the books. Equifax and TransUnion have agree to allow people who are not even victims of identity theft to freeze their credit for the cost of $10.00 starting on October 15th. $10.00 might seem a bit high, but when you compare it to losing potentially thousands through identity theft and having a huge paperwork mess to clean up, it’s well worth the cost.

The third major credit bureau, Experian, has not made a statement whether or not they will follow the lead of Equifax and TransUnion. Experian recently lost a lawsuit on appeal that alleged it had been negligent in its credit reporting processes. It seems that it would be very likely to allow credit freezes as a positive public relations move or as part of a plan to clean up their act.
Freezing your credit is a great way to stop identity thieves dead in their tracks and now consumers in all 50 states will be able to make use of this powerful tool in combating identity theft.