Freeze your credit, and enable Fraud Alerts on at least the three major credit bureaus, Transunion, Equifax and Experian. This takes about 10-15 minutes to complete all three. Easily click through these and create an account for each one, place a credit freeze on each, and secondly place a Fraud Alert as well. (note, Fraud Alert may be called a Security Freeze on one or more of these sites)

Be sure to store your username/password and PIN for each site in your Password Manager.

By doing a Credit Freeze and adding a Fraud Alert, you prevent an online attacker from creating an account under your name. You also gain some security from fraudulent activity on your credit, should someone open a line of credit in your name, they should be blocked, and you should be alerted by taking this simple action.

For those worried about giving these sites your SSN, DOB and other information, know that they already have this information, so you are not giving them anything they don’t already have. You may wish to use a VPN to mask your true IP address however, when creating your accounts.

 

For additional steps to place security freezes at the other minor credit bureaus, visit: https://inteltechniques.com/freeze.html

 

TransUnion

 

Equifax

 

Experian

 

Another measure you may wish to do is optoutprescreen, this site also requires your personal identifiable information (PII) and will greatly reduce the telemarketing and robo calls and other spam type messages.

https://optoutprescreen.com/