I had a friend of mine almost have his identity stolen. They started by retrieving his credit report. Freeze your reports so you control them, its free!
Think about that – your credit report is like a roadmap of your financial life, what a wonderful place to start stealing an identity! It is literally a list of the things you have done financially. You want to control who can see it and when.
The three major credit agencies will allow you to freeze your report once you prove who you are. Keep them frozen and only unfreeze them when you are applying for credit. Yes, its a pain to have to unfreeze your report, but is very easy to do. Now, each agency will try to get you to upgrade to this or that plan to “lock” your report. That is up to you – you don’t have to pay anything however to freeze your report.
When you register at the credit agency sites below, please make sure you use a different password for each profile. A great way to do this is to use a password manager. I recommend 1Password https://1password.com myself. Having very long and random passwords for everything is easy to do with 1Password and you can access it from any of your devices. There is no better security, its easy and keeps you safe.
Here is a list of the three major agencies and the links where you can start your freeze. Each may have different requirements, so have a place to track PIN numbers, passwords and usernames (oh my). A password manager is a great place for that!
Equifax – https://www.freeze.equifax.com
Experian – https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
TransUnion – https://service.transunion.com/dss/dashboard.page
Good luck and be safe!