Ask HN: Is there an efficient way to monitor my identity
Without _paying_ the credit companies/3rd parties/middle man.
4 comments
Yes. Most credit card companies will offer credit monitoring as a service to their customers--usually the TransUnion and Experian reports—-and you can get push notifications when someone pulls your credit. If you don't have a credit card, you can sign up for CapOne's CreditWise.
This helped me avoid a bad situation where someone took out of a covid relief sba loan in my name for $99,500. Got the push notification, called the sba, sat on hold for 2 hours. They stopped it.
If you don't want to freeze your credit, you can put fraud alerts in place for one year so a lender is supposed to call you and speak with you on the phone before putting any applications through. I've had a mixed experience with this
This helped me avoid a bad situation where someone took out of a covid relief sba loan in my name for $99,500. Got the push notification, called the sba, sat on hold for 2 hours. They stopped it.
If you don't want to freeze your credit, you can put fraud alerts in place for one year so a lender is supposed to call you and speak with you on the phone before putting any applications through. I've had a mixed experience with this
If you just want your credit report the official site is (https://www.annualcreditreport.com/) which looks fishy but is real (https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports). I am not aware of any more authoritative source or any API.
>Only one website — AnnualCreditReport.com — is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law.
From the FTC page
>Only one website — AnnualCreditReport.com — is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law.
From the FTC page
Put credit freezes in place:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-credit...
It is free and will stop anyone from opening new lines of credit in your name.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-credit...
It is free and will stop anyone from opening new lines of credit in your name.
No, it won’t stop them. Plenty of places ignore any freezes, and the bureaus themselves have been known to change the language required to get what a normal human being would call a “freeze” actually put on their accounts.
After all, it’s not your information that you’re asking for a freeze on — they created that information, and even though it’s about you, unfortunately you don’t actually own that information and the credit bureau can’t make any money if they can’t sell the information about you to whomever may want to come ask for it. You are not the customer, you are the product being sold. And credit bureaus don’t like products being sold that interfere with their business model.
But calling up each and every credit bureau in existence and asking them to put a freeze on your account, well that might actually help in some cases, so it’s probably still worth doing. Just don’t operate under any illusions regarding how strict that freeze will be, or how long it will last.
After all, it’s not your information that you’re asking for a freeze on — they created that information, and even though it’s about you, unfortunately you don’t actually own that information and the credit bureau can’t make any money if they can’t sell the information about you to whomever may want to come ask for it. You are not the customer, you are the product being sold. And credit bureaus don’t like products being sold that interfere with their business model.
But calling up each and every credit bureau in existence and asking them to put a freeze on your account, well that might actually help in some cases, so it’s probably still worth doing. Just don’t operate under any illusions regarding how strict that freeze will be, or how long it will last.