Chill Out: Irvine Police Urge Residents to Freeze Their Credit
Irvine PD is asking residents to ice out identity thieves by freezing credit accounts with credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Photo credit Erin McKenna
Looking for a break from this late summer heat? Freezing your credit might not change the thermostat, but it can cool your concerns about losing money and time to financial crimes.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network annual data report, “In 2023, people reported losing over $10 billion to fraud–an increase of over $1 billion over 2022.” With such rampant fraud and abuse, it’s time for everyone to go on the offense.
The Irvine Police Department, guided by Shiree Lind, Community Outreach Specialist, is urging residents to take a simple and effective step to prevent identity theft: freezing credit accounts. Thanks to a federal law passed in 2018, freezing credit with credit bureaus is free of charge. By freezing credit accounts with the three major credit bureaus, thieves who try to open a credit card or take out a loan in your name will be unable to get one.
“This will make it much harder for identity thieves to use your personal information to open new accounts in your name,” said Lind in an official Irvine PD statement issued to the public. “While a credit freeze won't prevent fraud on your existing accounts, it significantly reduces the risk of opening unauthorized accounts.”
For the past five years, the three most common types of identity theft have all been possible due to open credit accounts. Image credit FTC CSN
Some Irvinites might already be aware of this enormous problem thanks to the epic 2017 Equifax data breach. Some may try to protect themselves with credit monitoring services, but freezing credit accounts is far more effective. Credit monitoring services come with a monthly fee and only alert users after a fraud has occurred. Freezing a credit account, on the other other hand, is a proactive measure that stops unauthorized access before it happens.
While Lind pointed out that Irvinites should continue to “monitor [their] existing bank and credit card accounts regularly and set up alerts to quickly spot and respond to any unauthorized transactions,” she encouraged residents to follow the steps to freeze credit accounts with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
Identity thieves have made billions off of easy access to Americans’ credit accounts by opening fraudulent bank accounts and credit cards or taking out loans or leases in your name. Unfortunately, our credit reporting industry has created a system that seems to cater to thieves instead of the people they are theoretically serving. Credit bureaus could opt to keep credit accounts closed unless users need a loan or credit card. Instead, the industry automatically keeps all Americans vulnerable to identity theft by keeping our accounts open, including children.
While freezing credit accounts is not a silver bullet, it can severely limit how much damage identity thieves can do. If nothing else, it can make an icy distraction oppressively hot day feel a little less
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Each credit agency has a different process for freezing your account. The results, however, will be the same. Without being able to open a credit report, a thief will not be able to use your information to take out a credit card or loan in your name.
Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
Transunion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/ -
When you freeze your credit, you will be given a personal identification number, or PIN, that is used to thaw your account when you need to open it. If you lose your PIN, you can apply for a new one, but it will take a while (a week or more) to replace it.
After you get what you need, make sure you re-freeze your credit accounts to keep yourself protected.
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Kids' credit accounts are a dream for bad actors: completely unblemished and usually not routinely monitored. Shut down that vulnerability by freezing their accounts too. In credit reporting land, a 16-year-old is considered an adult. For a minor, additional steps are required to freeze an account. Follow the steps at each of the credit reporting bureaus to do so.
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Older adults are frequently targeted in scams that decimate carefully built sky high credit scores. Make sure to encourage them to freeze their credit accounts as well.