Free credit now freezes

Depending on where they lived, consumers had to pay between $ 3 and $ 10 per gel and then pay other fees to lift the freeze.

"Paying fees for freezes added insult to injury because the person doing it was probably a victim," said John Heath, Lexington Law's lawyer in Salt Lake City. The business helps consumers repair their credit.

While freezing your credit is a proactive way to protect yourself against someone trying to open an account or line of credit on your behalf, few people do it. A recent study shows that about 90% of consumers have taken steps to better protect their privacy in the past year – that is, by checking their bank statements more frequently – only 8% have declared to have frozen their credit.

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"I'm 100% behind the strategy of freezing your credit reports," said Ulzheimer. "Even if you've never been a victim or you never thought of being, I think it's smart to have some control over who accesses your credit report."

US Consumer Advocacy Group PIRG also recommends freezing your report at the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange. This is the credit assessment company that telecom companies (cell phone, cable, etc.) and utilities (gas, electricity, etc.) use to check your creditworthiness when you want to open an account. The difference with the big three offices is that it does not include your credit score, said Ulzehimer.

The latest change in the law comes 15 years after the removal of another consumer credit cost. In 2003, the changes to the Fair Credit Reporting Act required credit bureaus to provide a free copy of your report each year if you request it.

At the same time, the new law has also extended short-term fraud alerts to one year, compared to 90 days. These alerts are separate from the freezes: under a fraud alert, a lender seeking to approve a claim must first contact you to verify that the claim does not come from an impostor.