Congress passes bipartisan bill for free credit report freezes

[MySunrise271]

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/congress-passes-bipartisan-legislation-to-require-free-credit-freezes...

[pipeguy]

The bill was Senate S.2155 which was actually aimed at revising Dodd-Frank banking regulations - this measure will be signed into law.

Previously (last year) the House had passed their Dodd-Frank revision as  H.R.10 - the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017 on June 8, 2017. The Senate took a slightly different view and introduced their own version as S.2155 the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act of 2017 on November 16, 2017. 

After a bit of "posturing" (leaving the concessions and politics out of this discussion), the House decided to take up the Senate version rather than go to conference to mend the two versions. Passed this evening at about 6.00 pm with a vote of 258 to 159. 

The provision for free credit agency "freezes" is an add-on in the bill due to the Equifax mess and other data hacks of personal information, but mostly due to the recent Equifax incident - it's a nice win for consumers although it was by no means the "purpose" of this overall legislation.   

[gdale6]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/how-the-just-passed-banking-overhaul-bill-affects-consumers.html

[Anonymous]

This "free" freezing and unfreezing of CR how long does it take effect? Minutes, Hours or Days?  Is there a limit (number of times) when you're allowed to do this?

[OmarR]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

This "free" freezing and unfreezing of CR how long does it take effect? Minutes, Hours or Days?  Is there a limit (number of times) when you're allowed to do this?

---

Indiana has been free for at least the last decade, and i have never been limited to the amount of times I was allowed to unfreeze. The freeze is instananeous. I believe I have read warnings that there may be a delay, but I have yet once to experience one.

You can unfreeze for a specific amount of days for anyone, or a specific amount of days for a specific entity. Since I never know how the entity will appear on the pull, I have always done the first method.

Two of the agencies have you choose your own unlock PIN, while the third assigns you one.

I think the only issue I have run into was being excited about app'ing for a new card, and getting a 7-10 day message because I forgot to unfreeze! So I usually unfreeze, and call in with no problems.