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Anyone put a fraud alert on their credit report? What's it do? Login/Join 
Go Vols!
Picture of Oz_Shadow
posted
It appears I need to do this as my identity credentials are definitely compromised.

I'm not sure what happened to the Equifax class action lawsuit, but I've never received my free credit monitoring from that settlement either. Guess I'll be paying for one now.

What does a credit report fraud alert do and how much of a pain does it make it when you need to do any legitimate credit activity?
 
Posts: 17871 | Location: SE Michigan | Registered: February 10, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
Picture of RogueJSK
posted Hide Post
I put one on mine after the Equifax breach.

As far as I can tell from my end, it has had no effect. But it certainly didn't cause any additional headaches either.

I recently bought a house, involving multiple credit checks, with no perceptible effect and no additional hoops to jump through. I also had to then start utilities at the new house, which was another multiple credit checks, again with no perceptible effect.
 
Posts: 32432 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Thank you
Very little
Picture of HRK
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If you have serious problems like you said, you can freeze your credit, which means nobody can access your credit files without your permission.

FTC how to freeze your credit files


https://www.equifax.com/person...vices/credit-freeze/

https://www.experian.com/blogs...dit-report-for-free/

https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze



 
Posts: 23244 | Location: Florida | Registered: November 07, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
semi-reformed sailor
Picture of MikeinNC
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We froze ours...when we went to refinance a new home we unlocked it and then locked it again.

Mrs. Mikes info for was intermingled with a girl from Idaho who didn’t pay for her Toyota truck and we started getting dings on our credit...took about three months to get it straightened out...but last year her info showed up again...

We get a free check thru the one of the three credit bureaus every quarter, next quarter it’s the next company. Etc...



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Posts: 11247 | Location: Temple, Texas! | Registered: October 07, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Just because you can,
doesn't mean you should
posted Hide Post
Here is the legit one. You need to freeze all 3 and get the code to unfreeze if you need to apply for any new credit.
Very easy to do and unfreeze as needed. The few times I needed to unfreeze, I did it for a week then back on.
Once you have the freeze in place, the sites that charge for monitoring are not needed. No one can open an account in your name, even with your info (just guard your unfreeze info carefully).
You can get your report for free once each 12 months. If want to know more often, check only one every 4 months, but a different one of the three each time. They all show basically the same stuff.

General info;
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

Freeze info;
https://www.annualcreditreport...yFreezeBasics.action


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Posts: 9456 | Location: NE GA | Registered: August 22, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Actually the wife and I put a freeze on ours. Nobody can access it unless you give the lender a code. Once you do it junk mail goes pretty much away. We haven't needed the code since we haven't applied for a loan in about 15 years. It does seem like a very good way to go. Oh yeah, 229-9er nailed it. You need to do all three but pretty much the same process.
 
Posts: 7524 | Registered: October 31, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of smlsig
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After our last car purchase I realized that we probably wouldn’t need to apply for another loan for several years so as others have said above we froze all credit reports.

I also have LifeLock but not sure that is necessary with the freeze in place.

You can get your free credit report anytime by going to:

www.creditkarma.com


------------------
Eddie

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Posts: 6309 | Location: In transit | Registered: February 19, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
If there has been identity theft then put a fraud alert on. at the same time If it was me I’d freeze all 3 bureaus. I’m a lender and while it’s a huge PITA to pull credit and basically get a blank page, I get it. When your credit is frozen, the credit report a lender pulls is worthless. Most people only get a mortgage Infrequently or finance a car every 5-10 years. The hassle is if you ever lose or forget the code to unfreeze then from what I hear from clients who have it’s an all day deal on the phone to get it cleaned up.
 
Posts: 4738 | Location: Florida Panhandle  | Registered: November 23, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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