Credit lock: Ideal way to protect credit against potential fraud

Let the word ‘credit freeze’ not scare you. A credit freeze basically means potential creditors and lenders cannot access your credit report, making it more difficult for an identity thief to open new accounts in your name—even if they have your personal information.

This means that the lenders and furnishers won’t be able to access your credit file and would be unlikely to grant credit to anyone using your social security number. They can’t pull your credit report or credit score unless you’ve provided the credit bureau with a password to unlock your credit report. However, a credit freeze won’t do anything to protect your existing financial accounts or other identity-related activities that don’t require a credit report check.

The credit freeze option is a far effective factor than a fraud alert and all you are required to furnish is personal information like, name, address, data of birth, social security number, etc, to the credit lending company. Credit freeze is also known by several other terms including credit report freeze, a credit report lock down, a credit lock down, a credit lock, or a security freeze.

A credit lock down can be added, lifted, or removed. Adding it means placing a freeze on your credit, while lifting it temporarily allows you to apply for more credit and removing it means permanently lifting the freeze. You may request a lift for a specific company or for a specific period. However, placing the freeze or lifting it could be chargeable depending upon the credit bureau company. You might even have to pay for a credit report check.

It could take one working day for a credit lock to be implemented, but the lifting could take within an hour via phone request. A request by mail could take up to three working days to lift the freeze.

Contrary to the misconceptions, the freeze does not impact your credit score in any way. You can get your free annual credit report and even open a new account, by lifting the freeze temporarily and practice credit report check as usual.

It may be noted that a credit lock down does not apply to current creditors and lenders. They can still access your credit report and score without you first unlocking your credit report.

At https://creditsscore.in/, we tell you that it’s smart to take other steps to help protect against identity theft and fraud. This way, you can see if your credit report contains any suspicious activity. However, we would also like to tell you that a security freeze may not be the best option if you forget you have one in place or if you are prone to sudden changes in your life.