CYID vs. Credit Freezes

Since 2007 the three major credit bureaus have allowed consumers to place credit freezes (sometimes called credit report freeze or security freeze) on their credit files at the consumer’s expense. In many cases, a credit freeze prevents a company from reviewing the credit report of a consumer unless that company already does business with the consumer. The rationale is that by blocking access to the credit report, the company will not do business with anyone pretending to be the consumer. When the consumer does want to do business with a new company, he must “unfreeze” his credit file and then refreeze it afterwards. Costs vary but typically the consumer is charged for each freeze and unfreeze.

Disadvantages of Credit Freezes

1. Credit freezes place an enormous burden on the consumer to unfreeze and refreeze their identities at their own expense prior to shopping for credit or doing anything else that requires access to their credit file by a company that isn’t already doing business with the consumer. They effective prevent impulse purchases and may result in automatic rejections of applications.
2. Credit freezes are only placed on your credit file with the three major credit bureaus. Banks, employers, hospitals, government agencies and many others that may not use credit reports to make decisions involving you will not be affected and you will receive no protection in these cases.
3. Cannot protect most children since they do not have credit files to freeze.
4. Unless combined with other services, credit freezes do not monitor your identity for possible identity theft. Nor do they restore your identity or reimburse your expenses in case of identity theft.

PRIME™ Score = 20% (Poor)

Because Credit Freezes offers no proactive protection benefit beyond the credit file, no help with restoration, no expense reimbursement and no capacity to monitor the most important databases for fraud, they offer very incomplete protection if you want to control your ID.

Expert opinion

It should not be purchased on its own under any circumstances and should not be considered an effective identity theft protection service on its own.

Advantages of CYID

CYID has the following advantages:

1. Prevents identity theft with proactive identity protection that instructs lenders and others to verify all applications with you directly before approving them.
2. Restores identity records if identity fraud occurs
3. Informs you of new risks including data breaches and teaches you how to avoid them
4. Available protection for children
5. Monitors the credit file with CRANE™ at no charge
6. Expense reimbursement guarantee up to $1 Million should identity theft strike

Enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing you Control Your ID. Enroll now!