Here’s a reminder: Even if you’ve preemptively frozen your credit reports, you should check them for suspicious activity every few months.
A credit freeze is a good security measure because it prevents creditors from accessing your reports. That means if someone were to try to open a financial account in your name, they would not be able to.
That said, “a freeze does not prevent someone from using an existing account to make fraudulent charges, which is far more common,” Rod Griffin, director of public education for credit bureau Experian, told Kiplinger.
So, remember, you can get a free copy of your report from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion every 12 months, at annualcreditreport.com. That means you can pull one every four months to make sure none of your accounts are compromised.
If you check your report and notice fraud (a credit freeze does not prevent you from accessing your report), you’ll want to notify the credit bureaus immediately. “Go to Experian.com, Equifax.com and TransUnion.com to place a temporary fraud alert for suspicious activity or to dispute information on a report,” suggests Kiplinger.
And credit freezes are free, so while they can’t prevent all fraud, they’re still a smart measure to take if you’re not applying for any new credit lines in the near future.