On September 23, 2019 I received a notification from my credit monitoring subscription that someone had applied for credit using my name, Social Security Number, and date of birth. I called the creditor and let them know it was fraud. On October 10, 2019 I received another notification… a different creditor. I called them. On October 11 same thing & on October 15 same thing so I “froze” my Experian file… On October 17 I received a notification that Experian blocked an attempt to access my credit and that there was a “hit” to my Transunion profile. (I thought I was freezing Transunion & Equifax on 10/15 also – oops!) I then spent some time ensuring that all 3 were “frozen”… 5 “hard” inquiries to my credit report inside of about 3 weeks. Ouch! 4 out of 5 of the creditors said they would report to the bureaus that those inquiries were fraudulent and that it could take 90 days for those to fall off my report. So, while I was in the Equifax site, I decided I would try to expedite cleaning up my credit and I disputed the 3 inquiries that had showed up there plus 2 addresses that were never my addresses.
I should mention that the first time this ever happened to me was in 2008 and it typically happens 1-2 times a year (until 2 week prior to this point) so those addresses may or may not have come from those inquiries. Oh, and did I mention that 3 of those 5 applications resulted in approved credit? In any case, when Experian finished reviewing my dispute, they removed the 2 bogus addresses but told me that the inquiries had happened… so they could not remove them and if I wanted them removed, I had to contact the creditor and ask them to report it as fraud.
At this time I believed that no one could make an inquiry on my credit. If I want to apply for a credit card, car loan or mortgage, I need to “unfreeze” my report long enough for the lender to check my credit, and then, of course, I’ll want to freeze them again. It’s going to be a hassle, but not as big a hassle as the hours I spent on the phone unwinding all the above mess.
Here’s the bummer… credit monitoring isn’t always cheap… I get 1 service free courtesy of my Capital One Credit Card and 1 service free for a year because some company that had my information was breached and as part of a settlement, they offered affected consumers that option (and I took it). [Note: this started happening to me long before the above noted breach.] I strongly recommend you contact your credit card companies and see if their membership offers that as a perk. If it’s free, get it! Seriously! Just get it. And based on my personal experience, if you do not have a company offering it to you for free, you may want to consider paying for it. Be careful about the options you choose though. I’ve been poking around the internet and it looks like most companies that do offer a subscription offer a “1 bureau” option… there are 3 credit bureaus and they don’t all get checked by all creditors. If someone applies for credit with a company that does not check the one you are having monitored, then you still won’t know until they have run up a large bill and I (fortunately) do not know what the process is for unravelling that mess! Of course, another proactive approach would be to contact all 3 bureaus and just freeze your credit, like I have (finally) done.
Here’s how to freeze your credit at all 3 bureaus…
First, what is the difference between a “freeze” and a “lock”? You ready for this? A fee! If you “lock” your credit, the bureaus charge you a fee, if you “freeze” your credit they don’t and there is NO OTHER DIFFERENCE! (I swear)
Go to www.transunion.com/credit-freeze and create an account. You will need to answer some questions that hopefully only you can answer (like “which one of these 5 lenders have you ever had an account with?”). They do that to ensure that you are really you, of course. Then you’ll create a 6-digit pin – put that PIN in a very safe place. Now your Transunion credit file is frozen and cannot be accessed until you log back in and give that PIN.
Then go to www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services – similar process as above.
Then, if you have a Capital One card and have taken advantage of their CreditWise program, log into that and freeze your Experian file. (that’s how I did it). Or you can go to www.experian.com/freeze/center.html and I’m sure the process is quite similar to the other 2 bureaus.
Do you even know what is on your credit report?
Did you know you can get a free copy twice a year? (of course, if your file is “frozen” you’d have to “unfreeze” to get a copy). If you have not gotten 2 free copies already this calendar year, stop right now and visit all 3 bureaus online – If you wait until you want a car loan, or credit card or mortgage to find out what yours says, you may find out you have a lot of cleaning up to do before you can get that loan… they can charge you for your credit score, but not to see what good and bad things are on your report. Go check right away…
Because it can even get worse!
On July 18, 2022, I received an email from Experian. The subject line read: Notification of Change of email address
My fingers trembled as I opened it, and this is what I saw
So, I am praying that this is email a scam, right? Someone is trying to bait me into giving them the kind of information needed to access my credit files? So I immediately tried to log into my Experian account and I could not because this email was legitimate. Someone, with all of my information (Social, Date of Birth, etc), convinced Experian that they were me, and that they no longer had access to the email address associated with my Experian profile and Experian let them change the email address! Are you F***ING KIDDING ME? Anyone who knows anything about cybersecurity knows that a common lie told by these cyber pirates is “I don’t have access to that email anymore”. The proper procedure would have been for Experian to email the address on file and see if I responded before changing the email address, but they did not do that!
IDIOTS!
I finally got it resolved and locked down but holy crap! And, it’s not like I can stop doing business with Experian if I don’t trust the way the keep my information secure!
If you think this can’t happen to you, you’re wrong.
Of course I hope it never does, but I strongly recommend you freeze all three credit bureaus today!
Do you need a sailboat delivered? Do you want sailing lessons? Do you want to charter a sailboat and need a captain? Contact me!
Fair Winds
Captain Jeff Vegas
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