Many individuals have chosen to voluntarily freeze their credit. “A credit freeze is something you can put in place to limit others from viewing your credit reports, including lenders. Freezing your credit is an extreme step, but it’s something that might be necessary if you’re dealing with identity theft and other measures, such as fraud alerts, haven’t been effective for you,” states this article from Experian 6 Things to Know Before Freezing Your Credit. If you don’t know about credit freezes this is a worthwhile read.

Fraudsters are more active these days. I know some lawyers who have elected to do a “no cost” credit freeze as a purely proactive measure. If you aren’t planning on selling your home anytime soon, just bought new cars and have no intention of opening any more credit card accounts, this may be something of interest. You can unfreeze it when needed but that takes a little bit of time. So, if you are shopping for a big ticket item and the store offers you a discount if you open a new account with them, you won’t be able to do that. But, as the tech saying goes, maybe that is a feature and not a bug.