Experian now offering CreditScore.com FREE

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info, DaveinAZ, exactly what I was looking for!

[jesseh]

Experian owns creditscore, creditreport, freecreditscore, freecreditreport and uses all sites to offer the same CreditWorks Basic plan. (but sometimes they don't give the free monthly ex fico with it)

[xenon3030]

Regarding EQ lock/unlock:

The TrustedID free service from EQ needs up to 48 hours to lock/unlock and it seems that it does not have good quality and customer support. For me, it gave error and could not lock/unlock. It provided a phone number to call. I called twice and after being on hold for ~1 hour each time, I gave up. The cheapest EQ product was 4.95$/month to lock/unlock (EQ lock & alert plus).

Then, it seems that the minimum price to lock/unlock properly all 3 CRA, would be ~10$/month.

[Anonymous]

Regarding locks or freezes, if you're not actively looking for credit I believe a freeze is the best way to go and it's what I did with the 3 majors and Innovis when the breach was made public. I looked at the locking services and it was somewhat unclear to me as to exactly how they worked, what data they locked and didn't lock and who had access to it.

An article from Wired talks about this as well,

"The other two major credit bureaus (Experian and TransUnion) already offer this type of proprietary service, but credit locks are a sort of black box compared to credit freezes, which have a set procedure codified by legislation. "We’re still neutral on it—we don’t know yet if it’s the best way to go," the Identity Theft Resource Center's Velasquez says. "What it locks and doesn’t or how the data can be moved and accessed with a lock is unclear. I’m not saying they aren’t identical [to freezes] we just genuinely don’t know."

Full article at the below link,

https://www.wired.com/story/equifax-identity-protection-offerings/

[DaveInAZ]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Regarding locks or freezes, if you're not actively looking for credit I believe a freeze is the best way to go and it's what I did with the 3 majors and Innovis when the breach was made public. I looked at the locking services and it was somewhat unclear to me as to exactly how they worked, what data they locked and didn't lock and who had access to it.

An article from Wired talks about this as well,

"The other two major credit bureaus (Experian and TransUnion) already offer this type of proprietary service, but credit locks are a sort of black box compared to credit freezes, which have a set procedure codified by legislation. "We’re still neutral on it—we don’t know yet if it’s the best way to go," the Identity Theft Resource Center's Velasquez says. "What it locks and doesn’t or how the data can be moved and accessed with a lock is unclear. I’m not saying they aren’t identical [to freezes] we just genuinely don’t know."

Full article at the below link,

https://www.wired.com/story/equifax-identity-protection-offerings/

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I would say a freeze is the safest way to go. As the Wired article fairly points out, we know what a freeze does as it is set by law/legislation. What a lock does is determined by each CRA.

But I'm satisfied with the lock I placed on TU, EQ & EX right after the news of the EQ data breach. I'd never placed a freeze or lock before as I never felt the need, until EQ showed us how grossly incompetent they are. I'm not actively looking for credit, but you never know. On Aug 1 I was not in the market for a new car, Sept 1 I was in car dealership buying one. If my credit reports had been locked then I could have asked them "What CRA do you pull? TU, ok, give me a minute", opened the TU TrueIdentity app on my phone, unlock TU, and ask "Do you have my TU report now? Good", and locked it back up.

And this morning I got a quarterly account review from Penfed, and app'd for a CLI on my PowerCash Rewards card. In a few minutes I got an email from them saying EQ reported that my file was locked, and asked me to unlock it & let them know when it was unlocked. That makes me confident that no one is going to get a new account approved based on a new pull of my credit report, and that's what I want.

BTW, I told Penfed No, I won't unlock EQ, either approve the CLI based on my AR or mark the request Withdrawn by Member.