Fun fact: you can’t lock your credit through Innovis if the name on your phone number isn’t the same as your real name (for instance, I’m on my mother’s phone plan - I still have my own number, but I guess it’s under her name). I ran into this issue literally four days ago :/
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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I'm not American. What is being locked?
Your credit, which is a fancy name for the profile that financial companies build on you to determine whether you are able to pay back loans. When you apply for a credit card, get a loan, rent an apartment, or buy a car, the seller will look at your credit to determine whether you are a risk of not paying and will use this info to set interest rates and payment plans.
Locking your credit means preventing these financial institutions from releasing your financial information to people who request it. This will prevent malicious actors from opening lines of credit in your name, but it will also prevent you from doing so as well.
Unfortunately in the US we can't tell a single entity that we do not want this information released. We need to inform multiple entities not to release this info since they are all independent.
Oh. Man imagine if they had not privatized such basic public services...
I don't even know of another country that has such a system of any kind.
In order to open a line of credit (credit card or loan), the lender will pull your credit record to determine your creditworthiness. The "big three" credit record companies being referenced are Transunion, Equifax, and Experian. Based on your credit "score" with one or more of those reporting agencies, the lender will approve or decline your request to borrow, and determine the interest rate they'll charge you.
"Locking your credit" means telling those reporting agencies, "Hey, don't let anyone pull my credit." Why would you want to do that? Because of identity theft. If someone gets enough information about you, they can borrow money using your identity, and never pay it back. This situation is a fucking nightmare.
By locking your credit, you gain a huge amount of control over anyone - including yourself - from borrowing from a lender. Each credit reporting agency offers this option, at no charge, and the lock can be temporarily or permanently lifted by you (login, 2FA, sometimes you can even specify a specific lender who is allowed to pull your credit while continuing to forbid anyone else).
It is highly recommended to lock your credit. Frankly, it should be locked by default. In September of 2017, Equifax announced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people. That's essentially everyone in America who can take out a loan.
OP's post indicates that there are at least two lesser-known reporting agencies that you should look into to secure your credit reports.
Each credit reporting agency offers this option, at no charge …
It is highly recommended to lock your credit. Frankly, it should be locked by default. In September of 2017, Equifax announced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people.
Note that, before this incident, it wasn’t consistently free. I remember it being free to lock, but costing $20 or so to unlock. A law passed in 2018 required credit bureaus to offer freezes and unfreezes (and to fulfill them within certain time frames) for free.
Also note that you might need to look for a “freeze” instead of a lock. Experian charges $25/month for their “CreditLock” service, for example, but they offer a free security freeze.
The entire credit bureau system is so goddamn shady.
Why YSK: Locking your credit with the main 3 places is not enough.
Someone explain to me what that means. You mean you have to ask different agencies when asking for a loan? Wouldn't you just talk to the bank you want the loan from?
Basically all employers and financial services in the US use a top secret magic number assigned to citizens to identify them and create accounts. They also all use this number to involuntarily track us. The tracking services then hand out data dumps of our personal information (including the number) to identity thieves.
Now the only way to stop identity thieves from creating accounts in our name is "freezing" our credit report with the largest 3 (now 4) tracking services. If a financial service cannot look up the credit report, they won't make an account.