Protecting Your Credit

If you are like me, you receive a slew of emails (largely spam) and some mailings notifying you that you have been part of a data breach and your personal information has been compromised. In response, many companies provide free credit monitoring for some period. There are also several subscription services that you can enroll in that will monitor your credit for you, usually for a fee. We are not proponents of these services. Instead, we strongly recommend that clients simply freeze their credit. This is a free service offered by the credit bureaus.

There are four credit bureaus that track and report credit worthiness to lenders, landlords or other vendors that extend consumer credit. Each of these credit bureaus allows you to both “freeze” and later “thaw” or unlock your credit so that a report can be pulled by a potential lender.

Here is how a credit “freeze” protects your credit. Until you “freeze” your credit, any business can pull your credit worthiness at any time. In the case of fraud, the fraudster uses your personal information to apply for a loan, the lender goes to the credit bureau and pulls your credit. Upon seeing your good credit score, the lender loans the money to fraudster who disappears with it while leaving you with a loan in your name and a giant mess. By freezing your credit, a credit bureau will not provide your credit worthiness to anyone until you “thaw” your credit. This provides one more level of security that might thwart any would be fraudster.

While credit monitoring will notify you when a business pulls your credit report, you do not receive notice until after the fact and this usually costs a fee to maintain. A freeze, on the other hand, seeks to prevent anyone from pulling your credit until you provide the necessary access.

For your convenience, here are the links to freeze your credit with the four credit bureaus.

TransUnion: www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
Experian: www.experian.com/freeze
Equifax: www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/
Innovis: www.innovis.com/securityFreeze

If you have any questions or need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact your FineMark private wealth advisor.

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