Freeze your credit with all three major credit bureaus. It’s a simple process that can protect you from identity theft and fraud. It’s probably best if you do this on a laptops or desktop computer. Here’s how to do it:
Create an account with each credit bureau. You will want to go to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion individually. Each will try and upsell you on paid services. You don’t need them.
Do not use simple or memorable passwords when you create these accounts. A good password, especially for anything connected to financial data or information, should be generated by an app. If you’re in Apple’s ecosystem, use the Passwords app. It’s free and does a great job. If you’re on Android, you can use Google Password Manager. There are also paid apps. If you want to go that route, I recommend 1Password, which works across all platforms.
I highly recommend looking at all of the credit accounts in each of the three bureaus. Make sure they are all legit and you don’t see anything you don’t recognize. If you do, that would a signal that someone has stolen your identity.
You can freeze your credit for free on all three. Once you have created your account, here are the links to freeze your credit for each:
Freezing your credit will have no impact on your credit score, your ability to use your credit cards or anything like that. It will simply prevent anyone from opening a new account in your name. If you are applying for a credit card, mortgage, auto loan, personal loan, or sometimes an apartment rental or new utility account—anything like that requires a hard pull or hard inquiry and you will need to unfreeze or temporarily thaw your credit. Each reporting agency allows you to do this easily. Just use the same links above.
Pro Tip 1: Rather than unfreezing all three for a hard inquiries, I recommend asking the company you are working with which credit bureau they are using to check your credit and then unfreezing that one only.
Pro Tip 2: If you’re rate-shopping for a mortgage or auto loan, multiple hard inquiries of the same type within a short window (usually 14–45 days) are typically counted as a single inquiry, so shopping around won’t repeatedly ding your score.
Originally published on July 16, 2026