There have been so many just this week, I figured we should just have one thread so everyone can keep up with them.
Saks
Lord and Taylor
Panera
Sears
Delta Airlines
Add Panera
Best Buy
Credit freezes are better and better! So glad we froze our credit from the Equifax breach. Have not missed getting all the countless CC offers one bit!
We also froze ours. We have no plans to ask anyone for any more credit. If we decide to switch credit cards for any reason, we’ll unfreeze it.
We have had ours frozen for quite a while, but have to unfreeze the to look at our social security accounts and for me to look into getting my medicare account set up.
You can’t apply for Medicare with frozen credit?
Why?
You can’t do it online if you credit is frozen.
My info was compromised when the federal Office of Personnel Management was hacked several years ago. They even got access to my fingerprints! What did they offer me? One year of free credit monitoring.
Yes, with OPM and Anthem breach, our info has been compromised for me and H. :-(. Add Transunion to the breachers and we must assume our info had many opportunities to fall into the wrong hands.
It will be some years before my Medicare or SS and in the meantime, having our credit frozen is great with us if it slows down thieves.
I can guarantee you that Macys was seriously breached a couple of years ago … but it hasn’t been made public. We had three credit cards that were exploited then and they all were used at Macys (only place all three were used). We notified them but never heard anything back (I also told krebsonsecurity.com).
I’m not a huge fan of the credit freezing. Some friends did it after a breach and had trouble with various things afterwards (normal stuff, like getting a new credit card).
My main fear is some creep filing a tax return ahead of us. A neighbor had that happen and it was an endless mess to get it sorted out.
We have had our credit frozen for about 8 years. We had to learn that we need to unfreeze for certain
things-- like setting up Social Security and Medicare --and recently H needed to set up an account for
an inheritance and had to unfreeze.
So about once a year we pay to unfreeze for a few days and the rest of the year we feel much safer when we read about breeches. It has been worth every dollar spent. Also, all done on-line so not
difficult.
I froze the big 3 plus the check ones after Equifax too. Opened a new checking account recently and it was easy to unfreeze/freeze back with Chexsystems.
Don’t need new credit at the moment but it’s simple enough to ask who they use so I can unfreeze.
Had to unfreeze (thaw) briefly it to do social security/medicare stuff. Left it open for a week or two— in case we needed to do anything (but I don’t need/want anymore credit cards).