Freezing your credit is now free in all states under a new law
Freezing your credit sounds scary, but I do generally recommend looking into it.  I froze my credit awhile back now, long before the Equifax breach, just as a proactive measure.  Better to do it _before_ your identity gets stolen.<p>Since the freeze I've opened up a few lines of credit (loans, credit cards, etc).  It's not that painful.  Most of the time you just find out which credit bureau(s) they're going to pull from beforehand, do a temp unfreeze, and then submit your application like normal.  It takes a few extra minutes of your time, but is otherwise not a bother.<p>There have been a few instances where the companies I was working with were just ... incompetent and didn't know who they were going to pull their reports from.  Yeah ... but in those cases I just submitted the application and waited for the rejection letters to roll in, which state which company reported a 0 credit score :P<p>Is it as easy as before?  No.  But how often do you open lines of credit or bank accounts?  Not often.  And I don't think doing those things should be easy anyway.  The huge plus here is that you don't have to worry about identity theft like everyone else.  I've seen too many friends and family go through identity theft now.  It's horrific, stressful, time consuming, and seemingly endless.<p>And on the bright side, I think having your credit frozen is becoming more and more common, which means companies are getting more used to dealing with people who have them.  So the process is becoming more streamlined over time.<p>Now the caveats.  Yes, it cost me money.  It may still cost money even with this new law; as a fellow comment points out you may still have to pay whenever you need to temporarily unfreeze your credit.  And yes, it's a racket.  In many ways it feels like a shakedown.  But such is life.  People cheat you out of your money every day.  This wasn't a mountain I was willing to die on.