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TransUnion to Offer Credit Freezes Nationwide
An anonymous reader writes "In a little-noticed press release issued Tuesday, credit reporting bureau TransUnion said it would begin offering credit freezes to all Americans, a change the belies the credit industry's oft-uttered claim that doing so would be too expensive and burdensome. The program takes effect Oct. 15, 2007, will cost $10 each to place and to remove, and request and must be filed by certified mail. As The Washington Post reports, the move comes as some 39 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws entitling their residents to credit freeze rights. The new right may have little benefit unless the other two major credit reporting bureaus follow suit, and both companies are staying mum about any plans to do so. In May, Slashdot examined a related story on the credit bureaus' traditional resistance to freeze laws."
You can put a lock on your credit report so that new accounts cannot be opened.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
1) I ask to freeze my credit history
2) My history is frozen
3) ???
4) profit
3a) identity thief attempts to open an account in my name
3b) identity thief fails to guess the secret password needed to mail in and unlock my account
3c) identity thief's credit line is denied.
3d) my credit record is safe, allowing me to unlock the credit when I actually do need it and...
In simple terms, it makes sure nobody else can attach lines of credit to you. The credit bureaus hate this because every time someone verifies your credit, they make $50 or so, which means that they have a financial interest in making sure as many people as possible can access your credit as often as possible. If they only made money when people were legitimately applying for a credit card or a mortgage, they'd never be able to pay their CEO the millions of dollars he deserves.
Your absolutely right about the importance of having a credit history. A short credit history can kill a credit score even without any delinquencies or other negative factors.
I do take issue with the benefit of keeping the credit limit low. A potential lender may see larger limits and take that as a sign that other lenders feel comfortable extending credit to you. This is reflected in how the score is calculated. I use Experian's site regularly because I have free access due to my previous job (employer exposed employee data so they bought us all full access). There is a section where you can modify a number of the factors that affect your credit score and see what your score would be with the modified factors. Raising your limits on your credit cards accounts can improve your score. What will harm your score is having a low total percentage of credit available. For example if you have a balance of $400 on credit cards with a total limit of $500 between your credit cards, you will only have 20% of your credit available. This will negatively affect your credit score. If you have a $10,000 total limit with the same $400 balance, your percent of available credit is close to 100% and your score with be much higher.
Credit freezes would have no effect on pre-existing credit. This would not stop anyone from raising your credit card limits as access to your credit report is not required to do so. They can, and usually will, provide limits increases based solely upon your previous spending habits and payment history.
I frequently read through CreditBoards, and while having a lot of available credit could conceivably hurt you, actually being denied for having too much credit is pretty rare and seems to only apply to mortgages. In this case, the loan officer will instruct you to close some tradelines before they will proceed. This practice hardly seem predatory, especially given the multitude of other huge problems with the CRA system.
Send everything in writing and send it certified mail return receipt, yes it is a pain but when the time comes to the the CRA to small claims court you have everything you need.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
I really think you should educate yourself. Maybe then you wouldn't say such stupid and offensive things. There are about 2 dozen books written about the Enron collapse but if you can't be bothered to actually READ you should at least pick up the Documentary Enron: The smartest guys in the room.
First, there was a lot of corporate pressure for Employees to invest all their 401k allocation in company stock. This was pushed by the HR department as well as the C-level managers at corporate pep rallies. Second, Enron stock was GOING THRU THE ROOF. It was EXPLODING. You're sitting there, in the middle of the 90s boom, and you're seeing your co-workers dumping the max federal limit into their 401k's, every dime of it into company stock, you see the internal view of the company, flush with cash and growing like crazy, and you see those co-workers becoming MILLIONAIRES before your eyes. So you invest your 401k into Enron stock and get your boarding pass to the gravy train.
Still, I can level with you that personal greed (however understandable) is what put them in that position. However, there's a whole lot of people who never really had a choice. PG&E was bought on the cheap and integrated them with the rest of the Enron West Cost energy assets. PG&E had an internal stock ownership program: employees were granted shares of the company. Lifelong employees had loads of stock in a company that had been local, with a solid business, for decades. This was their nest egg.
When Enron bought them, they swapped PG&E shares for Enron shares. No doubt many of these employees were excited to see that, considering how Enrons stock was still going strong. But these are people who never really had a choice. They lost everything. And the very worst part of that story is that a Federal Bankruptcy Judge injuncted those employees from selling the stock. Enrons share price didn't collapse overnight. It took some time to unpeel that onion. At the same time, executives like Lou Pai were selling millions (even Hundreds of Millions) of dollars in Enron stock, these poor bastards who worked 40 years as linemen or plant operators were forced to just sit by and watch the stock price plunge.
This was an absolute tragedy. These people were just bent over and fucked over and over by the company AND the government. You really should educate yourself before you speak.