Comment by starwind
3 years ago
If you have privacy concerns, you can put fraud alerts and put a free credit freeze your credit reports
Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/cred...
Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
TransUnion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
And also freeze a few other reports
NCTUE (utilities and telecom): https://www.nctue.com/consumers
ChexSystems (banking): https://www.chexsystems.com/web/chexsystems/consumerdebit/pa...
Innovis (another CRA): https://www.innovis.com/personal/securityFreeze
LexisNexus (apparently insurance companies pull from them): https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/freeze
Work Number: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze
You can delete information from Plaid: https://plaid.com/legal/data-protection-request-form/
And usually you can talk to your doctor’s office about putting a flag on your medical records so they have to call you before releasing them to a third party
You can also opt out of Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx sharing information (individual banks may vary). You can also ask banks about additional security for your bank account.
Visa: https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do
Mastercard: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/vision/corp-responsibility/c...
Amex: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/privacy-center/
I also suggest setting up an IRS pin: https://www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/get-an-identi...
I assume this would only work if you want to never get a loan or say a new credit card - or anything of the sort that relies on that history.
Heck - maybe wouldn't even work for renting?
Unfreezing is a relatively easy process. They'll send you a pin where you can do it online, or you can send them a letter. It'll take them about 7 to 10 days to unfreeze things
Just to add on: an online unfreeze is instant, and all of the major agencies also let you unfreeze for a specified date range (even down to 1 day, I think -- although I usually do 2 or 3 days to cover a second pull if something goes wrong with whatever I'm applying for).
As a side note, if you use the online instant unfreeze, note that at least one of them (I can't remember which) handles timezones extremely poorly, and if the "start" date of your unfreeze has passed in their home timezone, they'll reject the unfreeze with an extremely vague error. You can resubmit using "tomorrow's" date and it will work fine (and be unfrozen immediately).