Credit Freezes Are Now Free
About a year ago, millions of Americans’ personal information was compromised through a hack of the Equifax database. One of the cautionary steps for consumers was to initiate a credit freeze with all three of the main credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – that would restrict access to credit files and make identity theft much more difficult. However, each credit bureau charged a fee to freeze and unfreeze accounts.
That has now changed. Effective September 21, 2018, a new federal law went into effect that lifted such fees to both freeze and unfreeze credit files. More details and information can be found in this blog post from Krebs on Security.