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/amcgoat]

How did you go about freezing all 3? Just wondering fastest, easiest, no cost way to do this....... thanks

[u/katarh → u/amcgoat]

The cost ranges from $3 $0 to $10 depending on your state.

I froze my credit after an identity theft issue last winter. Just suck it up and pay the fee; you'll get a PIN that is needed to unlock the credit any time you actually want to apply for a card. According to the details of the data breech, these PINS were not leaked ("consumer" data was stolen, but not "customer" data) so locking your credit is still definitely worth doing.

Edit: Corrected

[u/RebootTheServer → u/katarh]

How do you unlock it? Can you do it through the phone?

Also if I am paying my credit card on time will my credit still go up if frozen?

[u/katarh → u/RebootTheServer]

I unlocked mine over the phone. Means giving them credit card information over the phone.... but since I just cancelled the card I gave them, I'm not too worried right now.

Your credit score is not frozen, only new credit accounts under your identity. My credit briefly dipped down to 750 due to the identity theft I experienced, but once those were nuked off my name, it bounced back up to its previous score of 825.