topic Re: Downsides to Credit Freeze, or unintended consequences. in General Credit Topics

Downsides to Credit Freeze, or unintended consequences.

TheDude — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 22:43:26 GMT

Hi all, I have never bothered with credit freezes before as I have a lot of free monitoring in place. But today, Experian sent me emails that my SSN was exposed in the National Public Data breach, so I went ahead and put the freezes on.

My question is, are there any downsides or possible unintended consequences to having a freeze in place? What happens if I forget to unfreeze before I apply for new credit? I have excellent credit, and I would assume I get rejected, but then I could unfreeze, and then I assume I would get approved...is it that simple, or are there consequences if I forget to unfreeze?

Re: Downsides to Credit Freeze, or unintended consequences.

GZG — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 23:19:22 GMT

@TheDude wrote:
Hi all, I have never bothered with credit freezes before as I have a lot of free monitoring in place. But today, Experian sent me emails that my SSN was exposed in the National Public Data breach, so I went ahead and put the freezes on.

My question is, are there any downsides or possible unintended consequences to having a freeze in place? What happens if I forget to unfreeze before I apply for new credit? I have excellent credit, and I would assume I get rejected, but then I could unfreeze, and then I assume I would get approved...is it that simple, or are there consequences if I forget to unfreeze?

applications aren't as built to handle credit freezes elegantly if you forget to unfreeze, often requiring manual intervention/reapplications/human review, so just don't forget to unfreeze really. Once you're unfrozen, things should work fine.

but no, freezing is a far better alternative than dealing with potential identity theft, so there's not really a good argument against unfreezing. You can unfreeze in a minute for each one, literally, just have the website bookmarked for each one.

Re: Downsides to Credit Freeze, or unintended consequences.

NoMoreDebt — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 15:06:03 GMT

No downsides. Freezes and initial fraud alerts on all 3 reports for me. Today with seemingly every place that has your sensitive info not really able to keep it secure or showing any willingness its the only way. Its a hassle but worth it. I get something in the mail once a month now informing me of a data breech saying whoops sorry but here's your complimentary year of credit monitoring.

Re: Downsides to Credit Freeze, or unintended consequences.

FicoMike0 — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 01:32:59 GMT

I keep all three frozen. Set up an account with all three, keep username and password where you can find them. You do have to deal with each seperatly, but you can schedule a temp thaw, so you don't have to refreeze. Not really hard.