A new law to protect your credit has been put into place.
Jeremy Johnson from the Better Business Bureau explains that the Economic Growth and Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act has now made it possible to freeze your credit for free.
All three credit bureaus have made it easier to freeze your credit by going online and applying. After the application is submitted then your credit will be frozen within one day. Once a person decides to unfreeze their credit the unions have one hour to complete the action.
Freezing your credit means that a person can’t apply for a loan or a credit card. This then makes it so no one who has your information would be able to apply for a loan or credit card themselves.
This new change is especially helpful for parents how have credit accounts set up for their children.
“A lot of times children’s credit and identities get stolen because first, no one is checked on them because children aren’t using their credit and second their credit is clean,” Johnson said. “There is nothing on there to keep people back.”
Johnson suggests parents freeze their child’s credit until they are old enough to unfreeze it themselves and want to apply for a loan or buy a car.
When it comes to protecting identities Johnson says people need to keep an eye out for a new way scammers are getting money, shimming.
Shimming is when a scammer inserts a small reader inside a car slot. When a person then swipes their card in a card reader the scammer’s reader gets all the information.
Johnson says you can notice the reader when you insert your card it might be a tight fit or hard to remove. After your card has been read the best thing to do is then alert the institution the where it happened and then put fraud alert on your checking account or credit card you used.