New Legislation to Combat Identity Theft

coondoggie writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that new legislation in a numbers of states and the District of Columbia allows consumers to place a "security freeze" on their credit files. "For the millions of consumers who receive notice each year that their personal or financial data was lost or stolen, a preemptive security freeze can offer peace of mind. It blocks businesses and potential fraudsters from gaining access to a consumer's credit report and score and from granting new lines of credit in the consumer's name. In many states, consumers who want to remove the freeze can use a special identification number to unlock access to their credit file."

Comments

Re:OK but ...

[morgan_greywolf]

There are credit monitoring services that will watch your credit files for you for a monthly fee. In addition, you can get one credit report for free from each of the 3 major credit bureaus by going to http://www.annualcreditreport.com.

Re:If they are really concerned about ID theft

[snoyberg]

OTOH, with ID theft becoming more common, reporting agency will eventually be worthless since no one can depend on their reports anymore.

The problem is that, relative to the population, ID theft is very uncommon. So therefore, these numbers are accurate in the vast majority of cases, and when they are inaccurate, they indicate that someone is higher risk than they actually are. In other words, there is no increased risk by relying upon these numbers, and most of the time firms won't lose too much business by utilizing them.

Re:OK but ...

[KevMar]

but what if I lock your barbecue grill shut and you dont see it until you have several guests in town. I deny instant access to use it. now you have to go get tools to break the lock or change your plan for the evening.

As far as ducking from creditors, I was not very clear at all. If you owe lots of bills/child support and leave town, you can prevent them from using your credit report to hunt you down in your new location. I know its a minor thing, but it does get used that way.

My point about asking how often you open credit lines was to see how viable it is to freeze your own credit line all the time and unlocking it when needed.