Credit Freezes: How to Place, Lift, and Remove Them

To place a credit freeze, contact each of the three national credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — and submit a freeze request online, by phone, or by mail. It’s free under federal law, and each bureau must put the freeze in place within one business day of an online or phone request.¹ The one catch worth knowing upfront: freezing at one bureau does nothing at the other two, so all three requests need to happen.

Contact Each Bureau Separately

Freezing your Equifax file leaves Experian and TransUnion wide open, and an identity thief only needs one unblocked bureau to open an account in your name. Handle all three in the same sitting so you don’t forget one.

Equifax: Online at equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze, by phone at 888-298-0045, or by mail to P.O. Box 105788, Atlanta, GA 30348-5788.²
Experian: Online at experian.com/freeze/center.html, by phone at 888-397-3742, or by mail to P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013.³
TransUnion: Online at transunion.com/credit-freeze, by phone at 800-916-8800, or by mail to P.O. Box 2000, Chester, PA 19016.⁴

Online is fastest. You create an account with each bureau (or log in to an existing one), verify your identity, and turn the freeze on. Phone requests run through automated systems that ask personal information and security questions. Mail is slowest: a signed letter plus copies of your ID.

What to Have Ready

Each bureau will verify your identity before it will place a freeze. Gather this before you start:

Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number
Date of birth
Current and previous addresses if you’ve moved in the past two years
A government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license or state ID
Proof of address, such as a recent utility bill or bank statement

Online, the bureau will ask you to enter your SSN and personal details, then answer several verification questions pulled from your credit history — which lender holds your mortgage, what your monthly car payment is, which credit card you opened in a particular year.⁵ If the system can’t verify you that way, you’ll be pushed to the mail process with physical copies of ID and proof of address. Thin credit files and recent moves are the usual reasons the online check fails.

How Long It Takes and What You Get Back

Once a bureau receives your request, it must place the freeze within one business day for online or phone requests, or within three business days for mail.¹ You’ll get a confirmation that the freeze is active.

Some bureaus issue a PIN or password for future management. Equifax has moved to a username-and-password system through its myEquifax account rather than a standalone PIN.⁶ Whatever credentials you receive, store them somewhere secure. You’ll need them every time you lift or remove the freeze, and recovering lost credentials adds friction at the moment you’re least likely to want it.

How to Lift or Remove a Freeze

A freeze stays on until you act. When a lender, landlord, or other business needs to pull your report, you have two choices: a temporary lift (sometimes called a thaw) or a permanent removal.

A temporary lift reopens your file for a window of time you set with a start and end date. Some bureaus also let you lift the freeze for one specific creditor rather than for everyone, which is the more secure option because it limits who can pull the report during the thaw. Permanent removal takes the freeze off entirely, which fits if you’re shopping for credit across multiple lenders and don’t want to juggle repeated lifts.

Lifting is faster than placing. Bureaus must process an online or phone lift or removal request within one hour.¹ Mail still takes up to three business days. The one-hour window means same-day applications are usually workable, but give it a buffer before calling the lender.

You’ll need the PIN, password, or login credentials from when you placed the freeze. If you’ve lost your Equifax PIN, you can log in to myEquifax with your username and password, or call 888-298-0045 to verify your identity and get a one-time PIN sent by text.⁶ Experian and TransUnion have similar recovery paths through their portals.

When You’ll Actually Need to Lift It

Most people place a freeze and forget about it until they run into one of these:

Applying for a mortgage, auto loan, or credit card. The lender pulls your report as part of underwriting. Ask which bureau they use so you can lift only that one.
Renting an apartment. Most landlords run credit checks, and a frozen report often comes back as inaccessible. Many landlords will reject the application rather than wait.
Signing up for new utility or cell phone service. Providers often run credit checks to decide on a deposit. A freeze can block that check and push you into a larger deposit or delayed service.
Shopping for auto or home insurance. In most states, insurers can still pull a credit-based insurance score with a freeze in place, but in some states a freeze produces a no-hit score that costs you a discount. Ask the agent before the quote.
Employment background checks. Federal law lets employers review credit reports even with a freeze in place, but only with your written consent.¹

Whenever a business says they need to check your credit, ask which bureau they use. Lifting one instead of three keeps the other two locked and shrinks your exposure window.

Who Can Still See a Frozen Report

A freeze doesn’t seal your file from everyone. Federal law leaves specific exceptions for parties with an existing relationship or a legal mandate to look.¹

Existing creditors can still pull your report for account maintenance, credit line changes, and collections on debts you already owe them.
Federal, state, and local government agencies can access your file under a court order, in fraud investigations, when collecting delinquent taxes, or when enforcing child support.
Companies generating prescreened credit or insurance offers can still use your file for that purpose unless you separately opt out at optoutprescreen.com.
Employers and landlords can pull your report with your written consent even while the freeze is on.

The freeze blocks new, unauthorized creditors, which is the specific opening an identity thief uses. It doesn’t disturb the routine oversight tied to accounts and legal obligations you already have.

Freezing a Child’s Credit

Children are attractive targets because fraud on a minor’s file can run for years before anyone checks. Federal law includes a “protected consumer” provision that lets parents, guardians, and foster care representatives place a freeze on a minor’s file.¹

A protected consumer under the statute is anyone under 16, along with incapacitated adults who have a court-appointed guardian or conservator. To place the freeze, you have to prove both your identity and your authority to act for the child. The bureaus generally want:

A certified copy of the child’s birth certificate
A copy of the child’s Social Security card
A copy of your government-issued photo ID

Each bureau uses its own form, and most require submission by mail rather than online. In many cases, the bureau won’t have a credit file for your child at all. The law requires them to create a record solely so the freeze can be applied, and that record can’t be used to evaluate the child’s creditworthiness.¹

If You’re Already an Identity Theft Victim

If someone has already used your information, federal law gives you a stronger tool alongside the freeze. Filing an identity theft report and submitting it to the bureaus with proof of your identity lets you place an extended fraud alert that lasts seven years.¹ During that period, the alert accompanies any credit score generated from your file, so lenders see the flag next to the number.

The extended alert also removes you from prescreened offer lists for five years, and you’re entitled to two free copies of your credit report in the first year the alert is in place, on top of the annual free report available through annualcreditreport.com. You can file the underlying identity theft report through the FTC at identitytheft.gov, which produces a recovery plan and the documentation the bureaus require.

Don’t Skip the Specialty Bureaus

Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are the ones people know, but specialty consumer reporting agencies keep files that can be exploited too. LexisNexis Risk Solutions compiles reports used for insurance underwriting and identity verification. You can freeze your LexisNexis file online, by phone at 800-456-1244, or by mail to P.O. Box 105108, Atlanta, GA 30348-5108.⁷

Other specialty agencies worth knowing: ChexSystems, used by banks when you open a checking or savings account, and the National Consumer Telecom and Utilities Exchange, used by phone and utility companies. Freezing those files closes gaps the three major bureaus don’t cover. If you’re already locking down your credit, the extra hour on specialty agencies makes the protection meaningfully more complete.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c-1 – Identity Theft Prevention; Fraud Alerts and Active Duty Alerts
2
Equifax. Security Freeze
3
Experian. Freeze or Unfreeze Your Credit File for Free
4
TransUnion. Freeze My Credit
5
Annual Credit Report.com. Security Freeze Basics
6
Equifax. What Should I Do if I Was Previously Issued a 10-Digit Security Freeze PIN
7
LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Security Freeze