Ask The Money Coach

There was an article in the headlines recently about how identity thieves are selling children’s Social Security numbers over the Internet.  Click here to read the story.

One way to prevent your child (or you) from identity theft is to place a credit freeze on your credit file.

Credit freezes help you thwart identity theft by preventing a crook from opening credit in your name. Credit freeze laws, sometimes referred to as “Credit Lock” laws, began in California in 2003. Now, all 50 states in America, in addition to Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, have laws permitting residents to lock or shut down access to their credit reports with the credit bureaus. With a credit freeze, an identity thief can’t apply for credit in your name because you must first provide a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to the credit bureaus in order to “unfreeze” or “thaw” out your credit report and allow access to it.

Here are 3 links to each credit bureau’s credit freeze service:

https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp

http://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

http://www.transunion.com/corporate/personal/fraudIdentityTheft/fraudPrevention/securityFreeze.page

Related articles

• You: To protect yourself, think like an ID thief (washingtonpost.com)
• Why critics are wrong about credit monitoring services (walletpop.com)

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