@notrichenough, you are absolutely correct about getting different results with Equifax at different times, I was not impacted 2 days ago, just tried again, and yes this time!!!
Will be freezing credit, dreading the process but should do it.
Will be looking into the two-factor authentication also.
I just called my bank which doesn’t have 2 factor auth and asked them to add it. Also said if they use Equifax I hope they switch to one of the others. I can’t switch but they can. Doing the same with my credit card and savings etc accounts.
Huge thanks to all of you posting info related to this breach! Most helpful!
I tried to freeze accounts with experian and equitax - via phone and online and got messages unable to process now -
Unfortunately my credit union doesn’t offer two-factor auth, and aren’t planning to.
Changing banks would be a major PITA so we will just deal with it.
Never have your phone or laptop “remember” login credentials to financial sites or email, so that if your device gets stolen you are not vulnerable.
I memorized my cc information and never store it in any vendor’s sites. It takes me less than a minute to type it in…
@BunsenBurner A credit card breach sounds cute compared to this.
I’ve had 3-4 over the years (not from online, from gas stations when they’d ID’ed the source) and it’s a matter of a heads up from my CC company, and then waiting a few days for a new card. $0 liability.
Sure it sounds cute, but all of the stuff mentioned like dual layers of authentication etc. and a credit freeze are in the same basket of “fig leaf” measures. This is a crap mountain of trouble.
It sure is. I just wrote an angry email to my reps and senators (US and state) asking what they plan to do about this.
It felt good. We’ll see what it does.
Both of my ® US reps, senate and house, took $ from Equifax last year.
Thank you! @greenwitch @notrichenough
H checked last night and neither of us are affected. No idea how we managed to be so lucky.
My state senator’s office just called me back 
We had a good chat on the phone about what I expect him to do.
“If you used the page to check whether your data was comprised, and got a message that your information was not impacted, I urge you to try it several times.”
The cynic in me wouldn’t be surprised if Equifax’s lawyers told them to make it as broad and vague as possible.
I was told that someone decided to use his dog’s name and a made up SS# and so on and received the message that the dog’s info was breached. If this is true…
Anybody know anything about the service provided by transunion called trueidentity that allows you to lock your credit report but is easier to unlock, provides monitoring and alerts and free reports and is a free service? Is this worth doing instead of a credit freeze?
@cellomom2 I don’t think it’s free. Just for 2 months.
TrueIdentity is free with no time limit, they make money by showing ads and getting you to upgrade to the “Premium” version, which is $10/month.
The instant locking/unlocking for free is a nice feature. It’s not clear how or if this differs from a regular credit freeze.
It seems like a reasonable product, however it is TransUnion-specific, and locking your credit at TransUnion does not affect the other credit-reporting agencies, you still have to freeze them separately.
Interesting @notrichenough . I had to pay TU $5 to lock mine. Annoying that there’s a free way to do it.
Trying to do credit freezes and same as SouthJerseyChessMom above all 3 are unable to process now.
Was able to get a credit report through transunion and it looked fine. Annoyed because I set aside time to do this today and it looks like I’m going to have to keep trying over the next several days.
If freezing (and when its available to do so), do you have to freeze at each of three agencies? Isn’t there just one where you can freeze and unfreeze?
Unfortunately you have to freeze at each agency. Besides the three large ones (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax) there is also Innovis and someone (on this thread? can’t remember) mentioned PayChex.
When you need to unfreeze, you can ask them which agency they are going to use, and just temporarily unfreeze that one.