Freeze and unfreeze process per bureau
credit · 3 min read
The 3 bureaus
- Experian — experian.com/freeze
- Equifax — equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services
- TransUnion — transunion.com/credit-freeze
All three are free by federal law since 2018. No fees to freeze or thaw.
The flow
1. Create an account with each bureau. 2. Freeze each one (takes 1 minute). 3. Before a card application, identify which bureau the issuer pulls (see hard-pulls guide). 4. Thaw that specific bureau for 24 hours or until the application clears. 5. Re-freeze after.
Why bother
A frozen bureau cannot issue a new credit pull. Fraud protection goes from "credit monitoring after the fact" to "actually can't happen."