That’s exactly why we keep our receipts and check them against the monthly statement. It’s a bit laborious since we pay for almost everything with the credit card, but by keeping it to one card it’s manageable.
The criminals, who undoubtedly live in Romania or Xinhua, would need to have a network of tens of thousands of confederates spread out throughout the entire world to make small fraudulent purchases at your local grocery store. That seems, err, unlikely.
I have my credit locked at Transunion, but they never sent me the PIN in the mail. Assholes. Now I’m trying to get a credit thing done, but mine is locked and I don’t have the PIN. I have to call them today. Has anyone had to do this yet? I’m girding up my loins for a fight. This is what the hackers do, I guess.
On a side note, I only ever froze at Equifax (whole family) and myself at Transunion because it was just too much of a pain in the ass. The sites are all broken and fucked up. The most reliable way to do anything is on the phone, with the automated process. Even then, it’s far from bulletproof. For example, last night I went to unlock my shit at Equifax and the web site was intermittently down. I used the phone and temporarily unfroze mine, but then when I did my wife’s, I got declined at the very end for unspecified reasons. I called back, went through the whole process again, and boom. Worked. Bitches. The security at Equifax still leaves a lot to be desired. We’ll see what happens today at Transunion.
If a “free” soda ever pops out of the machine unbidden, it’s probably those hackers in Romania or Xinhua. Drink it and spill a little on the ground for bad credit.
I know someone who has.
The flaw with freezing your credit is that it’s really not that hard to unfreeze, if you have access to your personal info.
Like, anyone who hacked equifax could pretty trivially unfreeze your credit with them.
Nothing protects against spear fishing. All you can do is avoid being caught by a net.
Transunion should have displayed a pin on-screen at the end of the process (assuming you did it online)
They sent my PIN in a letter also, for some reason. It came in a couple weeks. But I froze my credit back in 2015 and I suspect they were a bit more busy recently.
I’m so stealing this.
@Timex I called Transunion and it was a snap. I just needed to know the 6 digit self-assigned pin associated with the pin they send you in the mail. I had forgotten it, but fortunately it was a variation of one I use all the time. hahah, sort of sad, really.
I never got the one they sent in the mail. Now they are sending another one and they made me create another 6 digit pin. In reality, that 6 digit number is the only thing locking my credit. The rep said they sent the other one in September, but I never saw it. I can’t imagine I’ll see this new one.
@Misguided, the web forms at any of the agencies have never worked for me. :(
That’s good news… I froze my credit a while back, when the OPM was hacked, and haven’t had to unfreeze it yet.
I’m considering buying a car, so I figure I may need to do it.
That $87.5 million will increase, but the lawsuits will likely take years and meanwhile the money keeps rolling in.
The UK has just fined Equifax the maximum permitted under the applicable law. Unfortunately, because the breach occurred pre-GDPR, it’s only £500k.
Do they at least slap them with a wet fish, Monty Python style? One can hope.
The fines would just end up hurting the little people working for the bank anyways. Like the way they started charging everyone for parking at their office near me in Santa Monica.
Wow, even the stopped clock that is the current Congress can do something right occasionally, who knew? Hope I don’t have to explicitly “re-freeze” my currently-frozen credit.
Damn, I literally just had to pay to unfreeze my credit last month. Oh well, glad it’ll be free going forward.
Yeah I signed up for my $125.