Cool it

In the event you missed it, this newspaper ran an article Sunday explaining how to request a freeze on your credit files at the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It's a request anyone can make, and believe me, I am.

Two years ago, I sent letters to the three credit bureaus, asking them to freeze my credit file. I also sent letters asking them to freeze my wife's credit file. I made the request after some high-tech hood hacked into a brokerage house in Baltimore and possibly pilfered computer files containing personal information, including Social Security numbers, of its clients. Two of those clients were my wife and I.

Knowing some cyberspace swindler might have access to our Social Security numbers and, in turn, our financial identities, I wrote the three credit bureaus. They promptly froze my wife's credit file, but they didn't freeze mine even though our requests were exactly the same – word for word – and included exactly the same information – item for item. Instead, the bureaus replied that they could not process my request until I provided the necessary information.

So I wrote them again and told them that I had provided all the information I was supposed to provide to freeze my credit file, but nevertheless, here was the information once more. Several weeks later, they replied as they had before: Until I provided the necessary information, they could not process my request.

So again I wrote them, telling them everything I had told them before but this time also mentioning they had frozen my wife's credit file when I had submitted a request on her behalf and the particulars of that request were identical to mine. And again, they replied several weeks later: nothing doing. I felt like a character from Kafka. I must have sent the credit bureaus four or five requests until, weary and broken, I gave up. (It is possible to telephone the three bureaus, but good luck finding a human being to talk to.)

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, the protagonist played by Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street": Greed is good. It would seem so, because now for $10 apiece, according to that Sunday article, each of the three major credit bureaus will process a request for a credit freeze.

I have a hunch it is being done gladly rather than grudgingly. In the two years since they and I became such good pen pals, it appears the credit bureaus have discovered they have stumbled upon a profit center. Identity theft is a real problem. It has millions of Americans spooked. Multiply those millions by $10 and, well, you get the picture: Alexander Hamilton in spades.

Or perhaps the credit bureaus are feeling some political heat. A number of states, including South Dakota, have passed laws in the past couple of years requiring the bureaus to grant credit freezes to consumers. But some, if not most, of those laws, including the South Dakota law, only apply to people who have had their identities stolen. Which begs the question: What good is a credit freeze after your credit already has been ruined?

Half the civilized world has my Social Security number and my date of birth. And yours, too, for that matter. Apparently, those two items and an evil disposition are about all it takes for someone to open a line of credit such as a loan or a credit card in my name.

While not a foolproof measure, a credit freeze helps to prevent identity theft because before a bank or a credit card company will extend someone credit, they will ask to see the person's credit file. If a credit file is frozen, the credit bureaus will not provide access to it until the owner of the credit file is contacted, certain questions are asked and answered correctly, and verbal permission is given. It's that simple.

Although they undoubtedly will protest such a characterization, those who confer credit – banks, retailers, credit card companies – are frigid toward credit freezes. Because once your credit file is frozen, it typically takes 24 to 48 hours - or longer - for a freeze to be lifted.

Let's say your credit file is frozen and you decide to go shopping some Saturday afternoon and you see a $2,000 sofa or a $5,000 flat-screen TV or a $40,000 SUV that you simply cannot live without or, ohmygod, you'll just perish. Unless you already have the cash or the credit in your pocket to make the purchase, you'll have to cool your heels until your credit file is thawed and the furniture store or the electronics chain or the car dealer can extend you the credit you need to close the deal.

In 24 hours you might not feel the same way about that couch or that TV or that SUV – or all that additional debt. The impulse might have evaporated from that impulse purchase.

Frankly, I don't care how we've reached this point. I'm just glad we have. My letters to the three credit bureaus are written. The checks have been cut. In a day or two, I'm dropping them in the mail.

Do not return to sender.