Any US-folk have experience enabling fraud alerts or security freezes with credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion)? I think I’ve hit the tipping point in data breach letters such that I should probably do something, but I also don’t want to make my life overly painful going forward.

@bjhess We froze our credit a few years ago and have had no problems. We had to unfreeze it once for a limited time and it was simple. It’s essential that you keep all the various codes they give you though.

@bjhess You do have to go through them one by one for each person, which isn’t ideal. As I recall, you could set up a window of time in which it is unfrozen and then refrozen with no further action from you. This works well when you know a lender needs to pull your credit report on a certain day.

@jabel That sounds good, thanks! My only big financial worry is FAFSA for the kids. I’m not 100% sure, but don’t think that pulls a credit report (since we’re not looking at PLUS loans).