Congress Passes No Fee To Freeze Law

If you were one of the many people who opted to freeze his or her credit due to the Equifax breach last year, it may be no comfort to know that if you had waited till this fall, you would not be charged. Yes, while it’s still more secure to have done it back then and most certainly it is still recommended that you don't wait, Congress recently passed and the president signed into law new legislation (SB2155) preventing the credit bureaus from charging customers to freeze and unfreeze their credit.

This change begins in September, but since that breach affected 147 million people, it’s wiser not to wait. In most cases, it’s less than $20 each to freeze credit and Equifax waived their fees…as they should.

While freezing credit does prevent fraudsters from opening new credit accounts using your information, it will not prevent criminals from filing tax returns on your behalf and stealing your refund. So, you still need to stay on top of that. Unfortunately, as of writing, the IRS has not put any measures into place that will prevent tax fraud from happening. If you still haven’t filed your income tax returns, you are putting yourself at additional risk for identity theft and fraud if you were one of the millions who have had his or her social security number stolen.

You also should continue to monitor your credit reports on an annual basis. The website annualcreditreport.com will provide these to you at no charge. If you get asked for your payment card details, read the fine print. It's likely you are being offered additional, and unnecessary products to go along with your free report or you are not at the right place. Consider requesting one report from one of the three major bureaus every four months to keep better tabs on activity.

Some states don’t charge for credit freezes, so check with the credit bureaus for specifics for your state. And remember that once this goes into effect, you can’t charge to unfreeze and refreeze it, should you need to do that.

Stickley on Security
June 20, 2018