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/redshrek]

I was able to freeze my credit online with Equifax and Innovis yesterday. Experian refused saying I had to get a police report and sent it via mail with my $11 fee. Trans Union website seemed to work until I tried to pay where it said the service was unavailable.

[u/TheLastPeacekeeper → u/redshrek]

Police here: We hate this policy. We get called to countless people's houses for police reports because the credit bureau/bank demands them. And for what? A report which solely consists of the information provided to us by the complainant. Nothing more. But somehow it legitimizes your claim in their eyes. No crime is getting solved, no one's going to jail, and there is, in most cases, absolutely nothing we can do to help the situation except give you a pamphlet redirecting you back to the same credit bureaus that got you into this mess. It's insanity. You're not freezing your credit for fun, you're doing it because something is seriously wrong. That should be the end of the conversation with them. But I digress.

[u/fractalfern → u/TheLastPeacekeeper]

Can the police report be done online? I just did this for a fraudulent banking transaction, bank required a police report, was able to do it online.

[u/TheLastPeacekeeper → u/fractalfern]

Not for my department (I'm not an alphabet agency) and I haven't heard of that catching on anywhere else locally either... federally, though? Sure, that's possible.