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Comment by exhilaration | Hacker News Reader

In comparison, here's what it cost me in September to place a credit freeze in a state that does not regulate its cost (Pennsylvania):

  TransUnion: $10
  Experian: $10.70
  Equifax: free (they made it free after they were hacked - until June 30th)
  Innovis: free (always free as far as I can tell)

And it worked really, really well. I had to apply for a corporate Amex at work soon afterwards. I was rejected because my credit was frozen and was asked to call. I temporarily unfroze my credit while on the phone (on Equifax, because it was free) and Amex ran my credit right then and approved me.

Having that kind of control was amazing. If I need to allow a credit check, I can do a 24 hour or 7 day unfreeze. It's such a minor inconvenience for completely blocking credit thieves.

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This may sound controversial, but politicians should also limit credit reporting agencies to finite, fixed number of players. Like two or maximum three.

Sometime after Equifax hack, I froze our credit on TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. But wasn't aware that e.g. Innovis exists.

So ok, I will now go there to put a freeze in place. But now that I realized there maybe other CRAs, DDG tells me I should maybe do something about FICO[1] and PRBC[2] too.

Or of course we could do the smart thing, and tell our elected representatives to work towards abolishing/repealing whole CRA industry. I'd wager that what ever rises from those ashes, could not possibly be the horror CRA industry is today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FICO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRBC

I hadn't heard of Innovis either until I read the New York Times article encouraging everyone to freeze their credit:

Christina Bater, managing director at Barrett Asset Management in New York, suggests freezing your file at the little-known company Innovis, too. Hey, why not?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/your-money/identity-theft...

Innovis Credit Freeze Online Link: https://www.innovis.com/securityFreeze/index

Seems to me like it would be better to require an opt in from the person having their data harvested so that bad actors could more easily be punished by the market, and to incentivize passing value from the data collection to the person on whom it is being collected.

If when a bank gives false statements (what is Owellianly called identify theft) to the credit agencies, this should be highly punished and the problems we are having with leaking true information about people would go away.

I don't think that is controversial. It makes sense to me.

My ideas are likely more controversial, though:

I think building and maintaining credit should be transparent. No secret formulas.

I think it should be possible to build credit simply by paying your bills and rent on time, possibly adding some money saved as well. Living well within your means doesn't build credit and it should.

One should have to report people's credit to all credit agencies. This process should be simple, and ideally handled by a government clearinghouse or other agency that the credit agencies split the costs for. This does make more than one agency somewhat redundant, but I think for the American landscape it is a better option than simply using the one agency for everything.

And lastly, I think we should require companies to report timely payments if they report untimely payments. Otherwise, even those accounts going to collections cannot be reported as bad debt. This helps the previous point about being able to build good credit simply by living within your means possible, yet lets folks that have never paid a bill have zero credit.

But why should that cost a dime in the first place?

I agree fully, as the beneficiaries of the credit reporting services are banks/credit lending services. The customers, us, are the clients of this lender.

Moreover, why wouldn't it be opt-in? That's right, have the data be exchanged when loans are requested. How often do people apply for mortgages, credit cards and so forth? Definitely not 365 days of the year.

Do you pay for each unfreeze?

Yes, it normally costs the same as a freeze - so around $10 for me. Equifax is waiving all fees around freezes until June 30 (http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/31/pf/equifax-free-credit-prote...) so take advantage of it while you can.

It's a ripoff, yes, but it's better than spending hours on the phone fixing your credit after it's been stolen. I fully support this federal legislation to make it free.

Isn't it crazy how the banks have somehow convinced people that when the bank loans money to a fraudster that somehow your credit has been stolen? No - the bank had money stolen from it by a fraudster. When the bank lies to the credit bureau that you have defaulted on a loan, the bank should be fucking punished heavily. Can't some US Senator (Elizabeth Warren?) please point out this fact and introduce legislation to fine the banks? Everyone (minus epsilon bankers) would love it.

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