Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines

Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by pkulak on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:49PM (#15241366)

Just 90 days? I'd rather freeze my credit. I already bought a house and a car. I'm done with needing credit for the foreseeable future. Freezing all 4 accounts (including Innovis, which actually seems like the most competent of the bunch) is the ticket for me.

https://www.experian.com/ncaconline/freeze

https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo...

https://freeze.transunion.com/sf/securityFreeze/landingPage....

https://www.innovis.com/securityFreeze/index

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by scrumper on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @03:44PM (#15241881)

Experian link just provides a grey page saying "Loading"

Equifax link is dated 2008 and hijacks the back button (wtf)

TU is an account creation page

I've never heard of Innovis :)

Which is not snark at you for posting these links, just a sad commentary on these important pages.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by Haul4ss on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:17PM (#15242173)

Innovis is usually an intermediary for financial institutions to check all three of your reports. If you've ever seen a hard check on your credit report from CBCINNOVIS, it's them. They're not one of the "big three", they're sort of a 0.5.

The other sites are practically being DDoS'd by people trying to freeze their credit. Glad I did mine before it became a fad. :)

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by scrumper on Thursday September 14, 2017 @09:55AM (#15247999)

Ah thanks. I haven't ever seen that.

Curious whether there will be a measurable impact on new credit approvals as a result of this apparent mass freezing. Equifax's breach leading to second order effect of retail credit gumming up would piss off Equifax's actual clients in a big way.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by sean2 on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @03:19PM (#15241644)

This is great advice and appears to be a good thing to do, but I just feel weird giving equifax money to protect me from fallout of their data breach. It feels like I'm rewarding them for losing my data.

I bet millions of Americans, who are suddenly aware of their vulnerability to credit fraud and learning about these options, are paying for requests and freezes.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by mildavw on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @05:24PM (#15242835)

Yeah, it bugs me too. What about letting "natural consequences" befall Equifax (or rather its customers)?

I take no action now. Scammer gets a $10k loan from BigBank using my info. I get the bill and report it as fraud. Write a few letters to clear it up (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-re...). BigBank will be out $10k and is now motivated to figure out a better way to make loans.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by PaulHoule on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @08:42PM (#15244054)

Maybe that big bank should decide not to get credit reports from Equifax and not to send them data. It would be a way to show that self-regulation works before the government forces their hand.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by cag_ii on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @06:51PM (#15243476)

I believe Equifax dropped the credit freeze charge due to the backlash [0]. The other reporting agencies may still charge however.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/your-money/equifax-fee-wa...

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by cr0sh on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @06:47PM (#15243455)

It didn't cost me anything to do a freeze with equifax; but I have heard of others paying. I am wondering if they only do it for free on those affected by the "hack"?

For the others, I had to pay - Transunion and Experian - $5.00 each; ChexSystems and Innovis were free also.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by njarboe on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:00PM (#15242028)

Yup. P/E of Equifax way up next quarter.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by vlunkr on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:52PM (#15241401)

They did say "if nothing else". Implying that you should do more. I got the 90 alert, it takes literally 2 minutes so it's a great first step.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by rrauenza on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:58PM (#15241457)

Now we just need a service like letsencrypt and a cron job that just resubmits that form every 60 days.

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by tonyztan on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @09:33PM (#15244332)

That would be an interesting idea... Except then the service provider would essentially have a database of names, SSNs, and addresses... I think we all know what could happen next. :(

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by cr0sh on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @06:44PM (#15243431)

There's also: https://www.chexsystems.com

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Re:Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines by js2 on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:26PM (#15242250)

For NC residents:

http://www.ncdoj.gov/freefreeze

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