Interesting. Can you elaborate a bit?

From my perspective, I think you may be underestimating the time, cost, and hassle involved in eliminating the damage you might incur from someone taking out a mortgage in your name or a home equity loan in your name....or using your SSN to engage in criminal activities.

If there was ever a time to take a "strategic pause" from churning, this would be it.

I just don't see the positive risk/reward ratio. Cheers.

Had my social and birthday stolen just before Xmas 2010 - not any cc info. Probably from a doctor's office when I was being treated for breast cancer. Thieves used the info to open an account with AT&T and charge 4 iPhones to it (and they were way cheaper than the new ones coming out now). Only way I found out was when mail from AT&T arrived 2 days before Xmas. I thought it was junk mail and was about to chuck it when I noticed an orange band across one side saying New Account Info (like hey, should you be advertising that on the outside of your mailing?). The fraud was committed the day that AT&T closed their billing cycle, so I got the notice about 2 weeks after it happened rather than almost 2 months after. It was actually misaddressed, but the post office delivered it because they knew my correct address. Lucky me.:(

In the process of dealing with it (disputed charge, fraud alerts, police report), I was told that the info could be held for years and eventually resurface. When you know that your social security number is out there, it is a very unsettling feeling. Maybe it was over-reacting , but I ended up paying for credit monitoring with - guess who - Equifax! Had just been considering dropping it since it has been almost 7 years, and nothing negative has happened. Now I will probably just put on the freezes and drop it. Everyone will have to decide what works for them, but for myself, the inconvenience of the freezes is probably worth it.

went to enroll this morning and site is down...

Trans Union offers free locking..easily turned off and on, no pin via their TrueIdentity. You can also freeze your Trans Union report. There is a fee involved and pin, not quite sure of the difference, but they appear to have the same result.
Equifax was free for me yesterday. Experian wanted $10. I believe that varies by state.

Edit- locking through Trueidentity won't help much..from website:

About this feature:
-Creditors, lenders (when you apply for a loan), landlords and employers can request and view your credit report.
-Locking your TransUnion Credit Report blocks others from looking at it, which may serve as a critical step in preventing an identity thief from applying for credit in your name.

Who are the "others" that are blocked from seeing your report if creditors and lenders are not?
edit again...or maybe I'm reading the above wrong

The responses above cover it pretty well. The criminals have had a minimum of five weeks and possibly as many as nine or ten to sell the stolen data again and again and again before anyone was able to put a credit freeze in place. Once the data is out, it's out for good. Criminals could wait patiently and open accounts in your name years from now. So your pause may be an indefinite one. I've received tens of thousands of dollars worth of benefits from churning, so the price of discontinuing the hobby for many years seems very high.

And this may be wishful thinking, but given the sheer number of affected people, I think there will be better tools available soon to respond to attempted identity theft. The politicians and the executives of the credit agencies have had their information stolen too.

What is the cost of identity theft on an annual basis?

It appears to only affect credit cards? But the credit card companies limit liability for fraud so maybe that's why there isn't a huge uproar?

Not enough people are being bankrupted by these kinds of breaches?

It's not just credit that could be an issue. For example: http://www.idtheftcenter.org/Identit...ocent-man.html

For how long and why?

1. The breach occurred a couple months ago (even if it just got in the news).

2. People are complaining left and right (both here and even on the news) that the free compensation from Equifax only lasts a year but the data may be used years from now.

So I don't understand, either you take a pause for many years, or you don't take a pause at all.

What's the point of taking a short pause when the data is going to be out there "forever"? :confused:

Wouldn't this require a face to face meeting to sign papers , etc as well as an ID ? Seems like quite the risk compared to getting 100 or so fake credit cards and jacking up $10K in charges on each card from behind a monitor possibly in a different country.

A simple internet search will confirm that mortgage and HELOC fraud are not figments of my imagination.

There is all sorts of mortgage fraud, simply inflating your income is fraud.

Typically to get a mortgage you are going to need some $$ down and years of income history. Most ecrow deposits ( to place an offer) are done by personal check. If somebody has all your info including where you work, a checkbook and access to provide official documentation of your income history chances are you know that person pretty well.............For a refi you will need the income verification plus you better pick a house with some equity, not all that common these days.

I wonder how many cases had a banker in on the deal ?

I'm not saying it has never happened but credit card fraud is FAR more likely.

Even if 10000 individuals of questionable moral character try to use 10 identities each this still only has 0.1% chance of impacting a particular person. And even then this can be sorted out after some headaches.
I can live with that - no need to lose sleep or freeze anything...
As a matter of fact from standpoint of impact on a particular person the bigger the breach, the better...

You would also think the lenders are more on guard.

BTW, Equifax is waiving credit freeze fees until November 21: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/y...iver.html?_r=0

How magnanimous of them. I'm whelmed.