Identity theft is happening everywhere. Everything is hackable and literally nothing is safe. The IRS has been hacked for goodness sake so you really have to go above and beyond to keep your credit safe. In order to protect yourself, I recommend freezing your credit. Freezing your credit makes it so that no one can open up new lines of credit in your name.

You can still use all the credit cards you have and it does not affect their limits it literally just makes it so that someone cannot open new credit lines in your name. It does not protect you from people hacking and using your current cards or bank accounts but from where I sit as a lender it is when thieves start opening new lines that the damage gets out of control. If you can make it so only you can open new lines of credit in your name you are ahead of the game.

How to Freeze your credit : Use the links below. Do not get tricked into expensive unnecessary credit monitoring services. If you want credit monitoring many credit cards do it for free now.

Yes, for free and seriously you can set individual alerts on your credit cards so you get alerted when a transaction occurs which would be my suggestion.

Freeze your credit and do that and you are ready to go!

Equifax: https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp

Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html#content-01

Transunion: https://freeze.transunion.com/sf/securityFreeze/landingPage.jsp

All three sites will give you a pin code you will need in order to unfreeze your credit. You will need to unfreeze your credit if you want a new mortgage or a new credit card or auto/personal loan.

Keep these pins in a safe or somewhere safe. Do not lose the pins. It is super easy to freeze and unfreeze as long as you keep the pins.

Stay Safe!