Here’s a sentence that I never thought would come out of my head: The three major credit reporting agencies are doing a smart and good thing.
If you haven’t heard, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian are all giving us the ability to freeze access to our credit files.
If you haven’t heard about credit freezes, keep reading. A freeze is a great weapon for consumers in the fight against the rampant spread of identity theft.
By now, you’ve all heard about ID theft. It’s where people use personal information to take over your financial identity and rack up a big debt. You can clear your name, but it usually takes about a year of exhausting and tedious effort to wade through the mess.
If you haven’t experienced ID theft and don’t know anyone who has, consider yourself lucky. About 10 million people are victims each year.
Most of the advice to people these days has been to rigorously check their credit reports to make sure people haven’t created new credit accounts in their name. Or they can pay a monthly fee to have it done for them.
Now, you can impose a credit freeze on your account to prevent any more credit from being issued in your name. What it does is prevent a credit card company, department store or other credit issuers from checking your file, making it unlikely that they would issue a new account.
It can be on a temporary or a permanent basis and you will be able to lift it briefly to add a credit card or to lift it indefinitely.
If you’re an identity theft victim, the service is free. In some cases, it may be free for seniors over 65.
If you’re not in either category, each time you use the service — freeze, unfreeze temporarily, freeze again — it will cost you $10 for Transunion or Experian. Similar fees are expected from Equifax. Transunion’s plan begins a week from today. Equifax’s should get rolling in November. Experian is launching its plan Nov. 1.
The move by the credit card companies has been hailed by consumer groups and state regulators around the country.
Rob McKenna, Washington state’s attorney general, says a freeze is “the strongest tool available” to prevent ID theft.
Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, lauded the decision but said the fee should be lower. It suggested $5.
Washington is among 39 states that already require a free credit freeze for ID theft victims or people whose personal information was compromised in a data breech. And McKenna notes that any consumer can ask for a free fraud alert to be placed in their files. It tells businesses seeking to extend credit to contact you to verify your identity before granting new credit, but it doesn’t block the companies from accessing your file.
Here’s some contact information if you’d like to find out more:
TransUnion: P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA, 92834; www.transunion.com and 800-680-7289.
Equifax: P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA, 30374; www.equifax.com and 800-685-1111.
Experian: www.experian.com and 888-397-3742. Call the toll-free number for a mailing address. I searched Experian’s Web site and came up with a raft of addresses for regional offices and the headquarters, all followed with disclaimers saying don’t write there for credit information.
ATM fees
In last week’s column about ATM fees, I mentioned that I hoped I was helping a stranded motorist when I gave some money to a guy who said he needed it to get home.
A caller mentioned that the man’s story — that his wife had a medical problem en route that had drained his wallet — was the same story he’d heard recently at a shopping center in north Seattle.
Anyway, I’m still waiting (not really) for the guy to mail me my $20. While it’s becoming clearer that I fell for a fake story, I still believe the big scam in that story involved the horrendous fees charged for using a cash machine other than one from your bank.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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