PA - Equifax; file a claim

OHMomof2
Wed, 30 Oct 2019 13:20:11 +0000

NJres:

My wife has frozen her credit (as have I). She applied for a new credit card. The credit card people need access to her credit file so she called Equifax to get a 24 hour credit unfreeze. They asked her all those self identifying questions… twice… Name, rank, serial #, address, zip code, social sec #, date of birth, sent a code to her cellphone, then asked her questions about loans and accounts she has. She asked, What about this 10 digit PIN I was given when I froze my credit? This was the ultimate and obvious way to make sure that only the person who froze could unfreeze. They don’t use the PIN any more! I couldn’t believe it!

Do it online. Takes 30 seconds once you have created your account (once). I car shopped with my kid this weekend and we unfroze all 3 for a month, easy and instant. Only Experian requires the PIN to unfreeze every time, the other two only to set up the account.

Anyone else see the irony in answering those ID questions that are mostly based on info on the credit report…by a company that allowed our credit reports to be hacked and thus the hackers have those answers? Head scratcher.

That said, many of those can be answered with people’s Facebook or other social media profiles. Listened to a great podcast about hackers who got millions of dollars in refunds by using an IRS tool to get tax transcripts answering those questions with answers people mostly just gave up on social media. Once they had the transcripts they filed the returns and got refunds.

It’s here: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/26/