Credit Lock or Credit Freeze?
After the epic fail of Equifax Data Breach where 143 millions Americans, actually if you’re using a credit card or any type of personal loans most likely you’re personal information is included e.g. your name, address, birthday, social security number, and driver’s license. These companies Transunion, Experian and Equifax knows a lot about us, that’s not good especially if failed to provide adequate security to protect it.
Why they have so much control of our information? I will leave that to you to share your views using the form below.
Credit Lock or Credit Freeze? After reading this article from FTC Consumer Information – Credit Freeze FAQs I’ve decided to use Credit Lock. It’s entirely up to you if you want to use either Credit Lock or Credit Freeze because there is money involve to use this service. The price varies between Transunion, Experian and Equifax. In a nut shell, I prefer to use Credit Lock because I can go to their respective websites to unlock my credit if I need to apply for a credit card, buying house/rental, or applying for job. Login to my account, un-lock my credit, then go back to lock it again.
While Credit Freeze, you can call the credit reporting company where you paid for the service to un-freeze it. You can ask them how soon the un-freeze to take effect, some days. Don’t forget to apply the Credit Freeze again after.
As of September 22, 2017.
- TransUnion through TrueIdentity.com provided free Credit Lock while Credit Freeze is $10. I’ve use their free Credit Lock. It’s a simple registration process, and it will take minutes to lock your credit. Kudos to TransUnion for making it easy.
- Experian through their Identity Works Plus service, included Credit Lock for $9.99 per month. Ouch! I will skip this for now.
- Equifax offer Free Credit Freeze service. I went to their website (https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/enroll/) to enroll. It’s ironic, I have to give them again my information e.g. name, address, SSN, etc to enroll. Oh well, I did it so I can get that Credit Freeze service free. I have to wait for a day to receive my confirmation email.
After a day, I received my Activation email from Equifax. I clicked on the email to take the final steps of my enrollment for free service.
Product Already Activated
The, I checked on TrustedID.com website using Google Chrome, not accessible. I tried it using Microsoft EDGE same not accessible, can’t reach this page. Oh well, another bad service from Equifax.
So far, at this time I have 1 out of 3 locking my credit. I will check back later to see if I can access my TrustedID.com account to check if Credit Locked is enable.
It is recommended to Credit Lock or Freeze in all three. If I have 2 out of 3 I am satisfied. Most banks requires to see your three credit reports anyway.
Credit Lock or Credit Freeze should be a FREE service period! Don’t you agree?
Keep your credit safe! Or don’t get a credit if you can.
Updated September 24 10:40am. Last night I tried to login to TrustedID.com so I can check my Credit Locked option but not able to login. I tried to login using a different network, no luck. I tried to reset password, it works but failed to login anyway. So far nothing works using Equifax TrustedID.com to use credit lock. I will try again tomorrow using a different network to test it.
Updated September 24 11:35am. After more verification I was able to login, yehey! Then, I get this message that I have to wait for another 48 hours.
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Credit Lock Status: Enrollment processing
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I guess, waiting for another 2 days to lock my credit won’t hurt. I hope.
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Updated two days. My account is active, when I login to my account. My Credit Lock Status is Unlock. Click on to Lock. And guess what, I have to wait for another 2 days.
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Updated September 26 6:40am. After waiting for 2 days. Login again to my account. This time My Credit Lock Status is Status: Report Locked. That’s a long process to lock my credit with Equifax. This is a minute of work compare using TransUnion Credit Lock service.
Just to summarize.
- I enrolled through their website, waited for 1 day to approve.
- The next day, I received a confirmation email from Equifax. Complete the confirmation and waited for 2 days.
- After 2 days, I was able to login and initiate Credit Lock. Another 2 days to wait.
- After 2 days, login to my account to see Status: Report Locked.
This is five days of waiting period from start to finish for Credit Locked provided by Equifax. This is not counting the slow access to their website, sometimes the internet browser came back “cannot be display” or can’t load page. Terrible service.
The good news is I’ve done my part.
I hope this help.
