There are two important reasons to place a security freeze on your report. The obvious one is to prevent a significant kind of identity theft from happening to you; the more subtle but equally important reason is to re-assert control over your own personal and sensitive information.

New account fraud—the kind of identity theft a security freeze can prevent—can create very serious problems for victims, ranging from destroyed credit to lawsuits and other problems. See our Fact Sheet about the legislation for details on the types of new account fraud and its impacts. A security freeze, unlike other types of identity theft prevention measures, prevents new account fraud from happening to you.

One of the reasons identity theft—of all kinds—is so rampant is the lack of control consumers have over their personal information. Placing a security freeze on your credit report puts control back in your hands, and serves notice to business and government that control over your information is important to you.

For both of these reasons, we urge you to put a freeze on your account today.

How the security freeze works in principle
You contact each of the credit reporting agencies—Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union—and request a security freeze on your credit report. The agencies place the freeze, and mail you a PIN code. When you wish to open a new account, you contact the agency the potential creditor uses, or all three agencies, and request that they lift the freeze. You can lift the freeze either for a period of time, or for a specific potential creditor. Once you’ve made the request, the credit reporting agencies will lift the freeze on your account, and your potential creditor will be able to process your application. On the other hand, if a thief applies for a new account in your name, he or she won’t get the account because the creditor won’t open one if it cannot gain access to your credit report first. The thief is left frozen, out in the cold.

Important information on timing: Until the Division of Consumer Affairs issues regulations, credit reporting agencies can take UP TO THREE DAYS TO THAW your credit report after receiving your request. Because you must lift the freeze BEFORE your new account application can be processed, you must plan ahead. Once the regulations have completely taken effect, you should be able to lift a freeze on your account within 15 minutes. At the present time, we do not know when a 15 minute thaw will become available.

Important information on the effects of a security freeze: A security freeze applies to your “credit score” as well as your credit report. A surprising number of businesses use your credit report or your credit score to make decisions that are not obviously related to credit, such as opening a new cell phone account, or getting new car insurance. You may discover that you need to lift your freeze to complete transactions that you didn’t realize would involve your credit report or score. When the regulations take effect requiring a rapid thaw, having to lift a freeze when you didn’t expect to will not present a significant inconvenience. Until then, we urge you to speak with the merchant about why they want to review your credit report or score and then decide if you really want to continue with the transaction you are considering.