Freeze your credit on all three bureaus. IIRC it is free for all of them, just don’t get tricked into enrolling in their credit monitoring service. You’re there to freeze and unfreeze your credit, nothing more. From then on, any time you apply for something that requires a credit check, you need to go thaw each credit bureau temporarily. They all let you schedule thaws, so just open it for a day, apply. And close it back up. Or however long your credit check takes.
The premium service offered by these data breaches is pretty terrible. In some cases, they’ll have a clause that says if you accept, you can’t sue or be part of a class action suit. If you have a credit card with monitoring included, they will notify you way faster if your credit is run. My credit card companies email me within minutes of an application being submitted. The paid service I got from a breach years ago doesn’t let me know till about a week later.
Freeze your credit on all three bureaus. IIRC it is free for all of them, just don’t get tricked into enrolling in their credit monitoring service. You’re there to freeze and unfreeze your credit, nothing more. From then on, any time you apply for something that requires a credit check, you need to go thaw each credit bureau temporarily. They all let you schedule thaws, so just open it for a day, apply. And close it back up. Or however long your credit check takes.
The premium service offered by these data breaches is pretty terrible. In some cases, they’ll have a clause that says if you accept, you can’t sue or be part of a class action suit. If you have a credit card with monitoring included, they will notify you way faster if your credit is run. My credit card companies email me within minutes of an application being submitted. The paid service I got from a breach years ago doesn’t let me know till about a week later.