We discussed this topic this morning, so I’ve extracted a few key points from the linked document below. For those that were not at the meeting, this is important stuff that I strongly advise everyone take action on. I will posting this in a blog, then using social media to push it out to a broader circle. Once you’ve read it, I strongly urge you to take action. You will need to do this for yourself, and your spouse, advise any adult children that have a credit file to take similar action, then take action for minor children (yes, there is a growing concern over child identity theft).

Based on historical breaches, I think it’s safe to say that if you have been using a credit card during this holiday shopping time, you’re personal information is at risk. Unfortunately, we won’t know about it until 3-9 months from now when the company that was breached is compelled to report it. Taking action now to freeze your credit report accounts will at least provide a level of protection when the bad guys try to capitalize on the stolen data.

Why you want to take action

1. Whether your personal information has been stolen or not, your best protection against someone opening new credit accounts in your name is the security freeze (also known as the credit freeze), not the often-offered, under-achieving credit monitoring.
2. …the best course of action for most consumers is to place security freezes with the three major credit bureaus.
3. This year alone, from January 2015 to October 27, 2015, there have been well over 100 data breaches affecting over 153,000,000 records. These statistics are a low estimate. Total records stolen since 2005 is over 889M. Many of these data breach victims are at risk of identity theft of one form or another.
4. It is important to note that neither credit monitoring nor a security freeze can detect or prevent unauthorized use of your existing credit accounts, tax refund fraud, medical fraud, or reputational or physical harm, by thieves. A security freeze prevents identity theft on new accounts, such as credit cards, loans, and bank accounts.

There is a nominal fee to freeze and unfreeze your credit report accounts. For example, Equifax charges $10 to freeze one account. I’ll estimate that this is a one to two hours of work for you and your spouse, then more time when you want to unfreeze and refreeze your reports. It may save hundreds of hours of pain and disruption if your credit is stolen. Summer has first-hand knowledge of what happens where your identity is stolen.

There is a nominal fee to freeze and unfreeze your credit report accounts. For example, Equifax charges $10 to freeze one account. I’ll estimate that this is a one to two hours of work for you and your spouse, then more time when you want to unfreeze and refreeze your reports. It may save hundreds of hours of pain and disruption if your credit is stolen. Summer has first-hand knowledge of what happens where your identity is stolen.

Click this link for full the full report on the What, the Why and the How to Freeze Credit Reports. Page 14 of the pdf is where the “How To” begins.

This is a public link, so you can safely share this email with family or friends, or wait for the blog post and share that.