I decided to do the fraud alert since I moved recently and none of the bureaus would let me freeze without mailing stuff to them. I was under the impression as I was led to believe that no one, including myself, would be able to open new credit without my explicit authorization of the new credit. That is clearly not the case at all. According to FTC.gov:
When you have an alert on your report, a business must verify your identity before it issues credit, so it may try to contact you. The initial alert stays on your report for at least 90 days.
No one contacted me at all to verify my identity and desire to set up this account. I didn't set up the account until after receiving confirmation from at least two of the big three that they had received my fraud alert request.
TL;DR: Don't assume a 90 day fraud alert is going to do anything at all to help you in the event of identity theft because it didn't do anything for me and anyone else could've opened this account in my name with only my SSN (leaked in the Equifax breach thanks pricks).
Submitted October 08, 2017 at 02:03PM by lapislazli http://ift.tt/2g2X4Vx
