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TransUnion to Offer Credit Freezes Nationwide
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 19, 2007 08:50 PM
from the invisible-credit-score dept.
from the invisible-credit-score dept.
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."
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New Legislation to Combat Identity Theft 124 comments
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."
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Confused... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) I ask to freeze my credit history
2) My history is frozen
3) ???
4) profit
Anybody able to distill this into simple terms for us?
Re:Confused... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
How can this be? You need a registered letter to freeze the account, yet a telephone call from your identity thief will "thaw" your account within 15 minutes and allow him/her to run wild with your credit again...
I don't see how this will do anything to slow or stop this kind of fraud.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Confused... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
You've all got it wrong, its like this: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not terribly pleased with the inner workings of the credit-granting industry either, but it seems to me it'd make the most business sense to grant credit to people who care about protecting their own report. Therefore, someone who carefully freezes and thaws their own report would seem to me to be less of a credit risk.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It goes deeper than that (Score:5, Interesting)
This helps, say, your credit card issuer because you'll get fewer or less lucrative offers to switch to other cards because you are higher risk, but it also means you might pay a higher interest rate on things you DO want to buy on credit (like a car).
If you can freeze your credit, credit issuers can't silently over-credit you and drive up your cost of credit at the same time.
IMHO, the credit "industry" is a major racket which only appears to be a marketplace; the customers of the credit reporting clearinghouses are the lenders, and the lenders benefit from lower credit ratings and scores by being able to charge higher interest rates. The credit clearinghouses have ZERO incentive to have accurate records, fair correction policies or transparent scoring algorithms; their customer, the lenders, benefit from consumer-unfriendly policies through both higher interest rates and lender-leaning policies that treat borrowers suspiciously.
I don't know, but I've often speculated that the mortgage crisis, which is actually a bad-lending-policy crisis, happened because some renegade lenders figured out several years ago that the clearinghouses were manipulating data against consumers grossly enough that a market was being denied credit generally unfairly. Of course this blossomed into a get-rich-quick real estate bubble, but the technical origins were in our "traditional" credit markets being lender-skewed by the reporting agencies and non-traditional lenders exploiting this gap.
I'd like to see MUCH greater regulation of the reporting agencies, including mandating transparency of records (eg, I get access to everything you share/sell about me in whatever format you package it in), record freezing, banning scoring (force lenders to make decisions based on actual borrowing and payment histories) or at least making the scoring process totally transparent and subject to regulation (ie, queries alone can't lower your score, scoring only based on borrwing and payment histories), requiring a simpler challenge process with the burden of proof greatly shifted to lenders (eg, electronic-only records not in consumers favor MUST be removed if challenges, lenders must provide non-electronic proof of discrepencies, etc).
I'd also like to see credit reporting ONLY available to lenders, not to employers or landlords or anyone else not extending credit trying to judge personality or whatever they use it for.
Its just amazing how little control we have over our credit dossiers and how much influence it has over many details of life. You can get caught raping a 10 year old and win a million dollar settlement if the cop who arrests you even THINKS about smacking you, yet even if you're the best credit consumer in the world you can get dicked over by the credit reporting agencies with only the weakest of "rights" available to you.
Parent
Re:It goes deeper than that (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*A few transactions are act
Re:It goes deeper than that (Score:4, Informative)
You may have problem only if your total amount of credit starts to exceed your possible income. But in that case you don't really need another credit card anyways (though it may have implications for getting a different type of credit such as mortgage etc)
But yes, credit companies love to extend the credit to "not credit worthy" because there is a better chance of getting fees/interest payments/etc.
Of course it's more fun to think that all of the free credit increases you get are just companies trying to "get you". But it's sorta like believing that cities that provide water service do it so they can put "evil drugs" in the water. And electric companies transmit through the power lines hidden mind control signals.
If credit card is really interested in screwing you, they wouldn't increase your credit line. Instead they'd report to credit agencies that you were late with your payment 3 times by more than 30 days, which'll put your rating in the toilet so much faster.
Parent
Re:Confused... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Called the companies up and, after wasting endless time in the phone system, finally found someone who claimed to be able to remove me from the mailing list. This had no noticeable effect.
2. Started mailing back every single offer with "PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST" scrawled across the acceptance form, in their own postage-paid reply envelopes. This was wildly successful. The mail stoppe
So what they really mean (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'm curious about is the certified mail [usps.com]
It doesn't prove anything about the sender, merely that it got received.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So what they really mean (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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One possible reason is to prevent people from claiming that they froze their records after something goes wrong and then trying to blame TransUnion. TransUnion can simply say, "If you sent it, you must have done it via certified mail, so you have the records to prove that it was our mistake, right? No? Then go away." Of course, one would think that a canceled check or record of a credit
Re:So what they really mean (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been making money by keeping information about me, and now they want ME to pay them to STOP?
Ridiculous.
Parent
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But, I completely agree with you with the passive credit pulls. We don't request those, but we do have regulation to block those with the 1-888-
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Pulling Credit Reports (Score:5, Interesting)
This year, I went to go pull my report from all 3 bureaus and none of them will let me see it - apparently because they "cannot adequately verify my identity", even though I've logged in with my same account information I've had with them for years. I enter my info; they'll ask me 3 questions about my credit past, which I correctly answer... then tell me I need to send my request via snail-mail.
HOWEVER
If I login and agree to pay $10, then they'll grant me access to the information, no questions asked.
This is a scam!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I went to TransUnion, logged in, provided my buddy's credit card number (with his consent, I gave him $10 cash) and bought my credit report that they previously would not give me for free!
Any questions?
Experian won't answer its phone. (Score:5, Interesting)
No live response at the 1-877 number, just loops of answering machines that hung up after awhile.
So I called corporate at 714.830.7000, at 5:29 pm eastern. Operator hung up on me. Called back, same operator, wouldn't tell me her name, wouldn't put me through to a supervisor, kept sending me to an answering machine that after awhile of canned ads hung up on me. Went through this 4 times.
I've been meaning to email tony.hadley@experian.com> vp govt relations
Matthew Besler Public Relations Manager ("flack", not a real manager) Tel: +1 224 698 4415 Email: matthew.besler@experian.com, about this, to ask them why they don't answer their phones,
but I'm lazy and didn't get around to it.
So, experian, are you going to answer your phone next time I call?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I had a case of ID theft, filed a police report and everything. Experian kept telling me I wasn't me.
Equifax and TransUnion had no problems.
Experian are a bunch of asshats.
Re:Experian won't answer its phone. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
new income stream (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they taking responsibility for the fact they give you sensitive information which might compromise your identity? No. Instead, they say for $10 per transaction (freeze/unfreeze), you can do it.
Welcome to the new corrupt America where we are all treated like some kind of cash machine, be it from corporations or gov't agencies.
That's nice... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
After checking your credit score, we talked with the credit bureaus & discovered you won't be able to afford >$1,000 a year in cellular service anyways.
Sorry, no iPhone for you.
Signed,
AT&T
What's to stop a thief from lifting it? (Score:3, Insightful)
To place a freeze with TransUnion, consumers will need to submit a request via certified mail, but they will be able to lift it via regular mail or by telephone.
Uh, isn't this backwards? It takes certified mail to issue the stop, but only a phone call to lift it? That's like saying it takes a key, password, and retina scan to shut down your computer but nothing else to turn it on. What's to stop a determined identity thief from lifting the freeze with a phone call?
Possible problematic detail... (Score:5, Funny)
So much fuss, so little problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. By law, make it the creditor's problem to prove that charges or credit requests were legitimate.
2. Preemptively invalidate absolutely ALL contract terms, agreements, or otherwise, which shift this burden. Period.
If there were an economic incentive for security, banks would be secure.
Right now, citibank employees will tell you to enter information about your accounts on the web site in "that email" if it has their logo. They don't know what sites are theirs or not. Paypal sends stuff out that comes from "x.com" -- try explaining THAT one to someone who's not aware of their history. Why? Because it's mostly not their problem.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Funny thing that. It is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Identity clearinghouse (Score:4, Interesting)
The clearinghouse would take the lender's verification request, determine whether the purported credit applicant was listed in the database, and if not, they would respond that the person isn't listed. The lender could then open the line of credit. If the applicant is listed, then the clearinghouse attempts to contact the applicant using the contact information on record to verify the request, first by phone, then by mail (the applicant could also request only to be contacted by mail, or could request that all verifications be denied until further notice). If the applicant verifies the credit request, then the lender is notified with a simple "yes" and can then open the line of credit. Otherwise, the lender is notified with "no" and is forbidden from offering credit under that application.
Any lender found to have opened a line of credit for a person who refused to verify a credit request would become fully liable for that line of credit. The reporting agencies would be required to remove the credit line from the person's records. Any legal costs incurred would also become the lender's responsibility.
The system would be funded via a fee charged for every verification request.
This wouldn't solve all identity theft problems. For example, if someone steals your credit card, you're still on the hook (at least as much as your credit card issuer doesn't cover). It wouldn't necessarily cover interception of one's mail. But it would make mass ripoffs of PII useless.
Disable all services you don't use (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in the UK, someone by the name of Jamie Jamieson came up with a way to exploit a UK law that says that everyone has a right to place a "Notice of Correction" in their credit report, which lenders must take into account when they assess your credit. Full details are given at http://www.freeidprotection.co.uk/ [freeidprotection.co.uk] but in short, you send the three UK credit agencies a notice of correction stating that any application for credit by you will be accompanied by your thumbprint, and that any application not accompanied by your thumbprint should be considered fraudulent.
It's important to note that the credit agency is not expected to verify that the thumbprint is yours. But most fraudsters would not know in advance that a thumbprint would be necessary, and certainly would not want to supply their own...
I have no idea whether this would work in the USA.
heading off state laws (Score:3, Insightful)
They really need sued.
Re:Too lazy... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Too lazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a PR move made by extraordinarily wealthy people trying to shore up their public image.
Simply put all of the conventional wisdom about freezing credit reports, and all of the hyporthetical armchair conjecture about identity thieves, and all of the poster children who pop up in news articles and brochures saying,"I froze my credit and, not only did it save my life, but it walked my dog, buttered my toast, and installed Gentoo for me!" are a decoy. Nobody knows the inner business workings or dealings of the major credit bureaus at the executive level and the credit bureaus, along with the executive level members of the banking institutions which they work with, like it that way. They'll keep offering you bread and circuses ("You can now freeze your credit report" "OMG! That's going to totally revolutionize the economic system and make all of the executive level fraud, insider trading and political graft suddenly disappear!") as long as the American public continues to generate profit and support their multibillion dollar facade.
Truth hurts. Cue the whimpering cries from trolls screaming "where's the evidence!" in agony.
Parent
Educate Yourself (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:The Problem with credit freezes (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should a lender trust you to repay the $60K loan - the $100K loan - when you have no history of managing debt on a much smaller scale?
The mortgage market is getting very tight for borrowers who can't demonstrate that they have both the experience and the resources to meet their commitments.
Parent
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If you've never handled a bunch of cash someone else gave you, how can I trust you'll be good with mine?
If it was only about this, then it should be enough to show your monthly salary ('cash someone else gives you') and that you have no outstanding debt. QED. And it's exactly how it works in europe: there's no such thing as this credit reporting bureau bullshit. You are right, they want to squeeze you like a lemon, and not necessarily make sure you can pay back your loan properly. Otherwise why would they offer things like 2nd or 3rd mortgage ? After you fail payment, they move in, grab the loot and make eve
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Re:The Problem with credit freezes (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)