State Security Freeze Laws

U.S. PIRG's Consumer Blog has this excellent discussion of state security freeze laws -- laws that allow consumers to put a freeze on their credit reports.  These laws are weapons against identity theft.  As the PIRG post puts it:

Your best defense against identity theft is to freeze your credit report. That way, when a thief applies for credit using your purloined Social Security Number, he or she is denied when the cell phone company or department store contacts the bureau and is told that your report is frozen.

The PIRG post surveys what various states have done and discusses the progress of weaker, but  non-preemptive proposed federal legislation.

Comments

[Megan]

I am extremely displeased with how the credit freeze process is handled and would like to raise awareness that this is NOT a good service to tout. It sounds simple, and in theory it is. Unfortunately, in reality you cannot lift the freeze as easily as they make it sound. It involves sending massive amounts of identifying paperwork (sketchy to send via mail), paying a fee and then waiting upwards of three days to get it lifted. As a matter of fact, I tried to lift mine two weeks ago. Still waiting. Furthermore, contacting the credit bureaus when something goes wrong is impossible, which is perhaps the most serious problem. You literally cannot speak to a representative at Experian. I even went so far as to call the headquarters and was told specifically that there was no one to help me, that I would need to send an additional letter via snail mail. How progressive of them. I HIGHLY discourage doing this. Judging from the problems I have encountered, it would not be easy to obtain credit in an emergency. In fact, it would be damn near impossible.

[Megan]

I am extremely displeased with how the credit freeze process is handled and would like to raise awareness that this is NOT a good service to tout. It sounds simple, and in theory it is. Unfortunately, in reality you cannot lift the freeze as easily as they make it sound. It involves sending massive amounts of identifying paperwork (sketchy to send via mail), paying a fee and then waiting upwards of three days to get it lifted. As a matter of fact, I tried to lift mine two weeks ago. Still waiting. Furthermore, contacting the credit bureaus when something goes wrong is impossible, which is perhaps the most serious problem. You literally cannot speak to a representative at Experian. I even went so far as to call the headquarters and was told specifically that there was no one to help me, that I would need to send an additional letter via snail mail. How progressive of them. I HIGHLY discourage doing this. Judging from the problems I have encountered, it would not be easy to obtain credit in an emergency. In fact, it would be damn near impossible.

[Megan]

I am extremely displeased with how the credit freeze process is handled and would like to raise awareness that this is NOT a good service to tout. It sounds simple, and in theory it is. Unfortunately, in reality you cannot lift the freeze as easily as they make it sound. It involves sending massive amounts of identifying paperwork (sketchy to send via mail), paying a fee and then waiting upwards of three days to get it lifted. As a matter of fact, I tried to lift mine two weeks ago. Still waiting. Furthermore, contacting the credit bureaus when something goes wrong is impossible, which is perhaps the most serious problem. You literally cannot speak to a representative at Experian. I even went so far as to call the headquarters and was told specifically that there was no one to help me, that I would need to send an additional letter via snail mail. How progressive of them. I HIGHLY discourage doing this. Judging from the problems I have encountered, it would not be easy to obtain credit in an emergency. In fact, it would be damn near impossible.

[Megan]

I am extremely displeased with how the credit freeze process is handled and would like to raise awareness that this is NOT a good service to tout. It sounds simple, and in theory it is. Unfortunately, in reality you cannot lift the freeze as easily as they make it sound. It involves sending massive amounts of identifying paperwork (sketchy to send via mail), paying a fee and then waiting upwards of three days to get it lifted. As a matter of fact, I tried to lift mine two weeks ago. Still waiting. Furthermore, contacting the credit bureaus when something goes wrong is impossible, which is perhaps the most serious problem. You literally cannot speak to a representative at Experian. I even went so far as to call the headquarters and was told specifically that there was no one to help me, that I would need to send an additional letter via snail mail. How progressive of them. I HIGHLY discourage doing this. Judging from the problems I have encountered, it would not be easy to obtain credit in an emergency. In fact, it would be damn near impossible.

[Jeremy]

Freeezes have been a huge issue for me for a long time. As such a simple effective tool to prevent ID theft, I can't get over how little press it's getting. I have two articles about this on my site: one that explains freezes in depth and the other that explains why the Presidents ID Theft task force completely failed by snubbing freezes while recommending Fraud alerts and monitoring (which are both worthless).

http://www.jeremyduffy.com/top-issues/credit-security-freezes/
http://www.jeremyduffy.com/rants/the-failure-of-the-presidents-id-theft-task-force/