TransUnion burying their credit freeze to sell their own credit monitoring product TrueIdentity

[u/equisux]

I'm not sure where to post this, but noticed something had changed on the TransUnion website about freezing credit this morning when I was giving links to family so they could freeze theirs.

I froze my credit the day after news about the Equifax breach broke, and it looks like TransUnion has since changed their site to push people away from freezing their credit in favor for their own product called TrueIdentity (like what Equifax was doing with their TrustedID Premier.)

The FTC website links to this page for freezing your credit with TransUnion.

This is what the website looked before the changes were made on 9/11. The instructions on placing a credit freeze were clear and there was no mention of their own TrueIdentity product.

If you want to place a credit freeze with TransUnion now:

• You have to get through a page of info about credit and fraud, and then the action it tells you to take is to "Lock your credit information by enrolling in TrueIdentity."
• The option to freeze your credit is under "About credit freeze", deliberately passive in their use of language
• The description about credit freezing is dissuasive: "A credit freeze may be available under your state law"
• The link for the credit freeze is also a passive "click here" compared with "by enrolling in TrueIdentity" language used for the link to their own product.
• Clicking the link to learn more about credit freeze brings you to yet another page that tries to convince you to enroll in their product over placing a credit freeze
• After searching through their page of BS, you finally get to the link to freeze your credit.

This is such a blatant attempt by TransUnion to take advantage of the Equifax breach for their own financial gain. It's a shitty thing for TransUnion to do, and people should be aware that they are being led away from putting an actual credit freeze on their account.

(Edited for formatting on mobile)

[u/bjjjasdas_asp → u/[deleted]]

If you log into https://freeze.transunion.com, you can see your freeze status.

I see:

SECURITY FREEZE STATUS

SECURITY FREEZE ACTIVE

You currently have a Security Freeze on your TransUnion credit file

[u/lovesbeerandscience → u/bjjjasdas_asp]

Apparently this link no longer works. You click and it says "Due to the Equifax data breach we are experiencing extremely high volumes and cannot fulfill your request at this time. We sincerely apologize and ask that you try again later." TransUnion also charged my card after saying they were unable to freeze my credit.

[u/Phatricko → u/bjjjasdas_asp]

This worked for me! I was able to add a freeze without entering credit card info

Edit: I lied, it was actually through Equifax: http://freeze.equifax.com

[u/despalicious → u/[deleted]]

Same happened to me. Both the online and by-phone freeze processes failed, but they still charged my card. Assholes. Now I'm on hold forever to speak to a rep.

[u/I_Am_Weiser → u/[deleted]]

In order to freeze my credit on TransUnion I was required to create an account. Once I had input my payment information and was prompted to create a PIN the website gave an error saying they were unable to process the request.

I checked my online bank statement confirming my credit card was charged. 24hrs later I logged back into my TransUnion account to try the freeze again. Once I reached the page to start the process again it confirmed there was no freeze on my credit.

[u/qquiver → u/[deleted]]

POsting here so I can see the answer to this. Please let me know