That Equifax breach was outrageous right? When they finally reported it is a whole other story.
But Here’s What You Can Do:
Review your credit report. You can get a credit report for free by visiting annualcreditreport.com, once each year. This will include pages and pages of your life! Stalker’s paradise. Information from all three credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Doesn’t include a score though.
Consider a Credit Monitoring Service. There are services that can monitor your credit for suspicious activity – but fees and trial periods watch out for those. If you need to enter credit card info, abort. Check to see if any of your lenders offer free credit monitoring and look for truly free services.
I opened my first line of credit less than a year ago, when I made the decision to permanently live in the U.S. I was overly cautious, and probably just over did it. Three lines of credit I opened offered credit monitoring which I used, and I signed up for free credit monitoring by other financial institutions and. Well here is the list:
- Credit Karma
- Credit Sesame
- Transunion
- Chase Credit Journey
- Capital One Credit Wise
- Discover Free Credit Score
You really don’t need to use that many. Your credit will pretty much be the same in each, they all get updated at different times and pull info from different bureaus.
Consider a Credit Freeze. If you aren’t applying for any new loans, or opening a new line of credit consider freezing your credit.
Cause sings “I don’t need no frauds” LOL. Song came to my mind.
But seriously, this prevents frauds from trying to open new lines of credit. Lenders you already use will still have access to your credit.
To place a freeze on your credit, you must submit to all three bureaus:
- Equifax: 800-685-1111, orwww.freeze.equifax.com
- Experian: 888-397-3742, orexperian.com/consumer/
security_freeze.html - TransUnion: 800-680-7289, or transunion.com/
securityfreeze
Create a fraud alert. If you opt against a credit freeze, consider putting a fraud alert on file. This will warn creditors that your information was compromised, and require them to verify your identity before establishing any new accounts. Instructions are available here.
What do you think of this breach? And what do you think about how long they took to report it?