Becoming a victim of identity theft and having your personal information stolen is not something that can be fixed overnight.  It can takes months, maybe even years to get everything straightened out and for you to get your identity back.  One way that you can prevent this from happening is to consider freezing your credit report.  As everyone knows your credit report contains information about the way you pay your bills which lenders and creditors us to make any decision about to give you credit or not.

If you decide to freeze your credit repot these creditors and lenders cannot check your credit score or report unless you give the credit bureau a password.  Since most places will require a credit check before they will give a person a loan an application for credit will most likely denied if they do not have the correct password to check your credit score.  You can freeze your credit report with all 3 major credit bureaus.

If you already have credit with a company they can access your credit score and report without the password.  In addition, there are certain government entities and law enforcement agencies that can access your credit score and report.  Your credit score is not affected by the credit freeze.

Here are some reasons that you might want to freeze your credit report.

• If you have been a victim of identity theft
• If your credit card number has been stolen
• If your mail has been stolen or tampered with
• If you want to protect yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft
• If you have subscribed to a credit monitoring service

In all but nine states there are laws requiring credit bureaus to allow security freezes on credit report.  In the nine states where there are not laws requiring this, the credit bureaus voluntarily allows you to freeze your credit report.  In many states the freezing of your credit report will remain in effect until you take it off but in some states it will expire after seven years.

The fees to put a freeze on your credit report, remove the freeze, replace your PIN. Or temporarily lift the freeze can range from five to twenty dollars.  There is no fee to freeze your credit report if you have been a victim of identity theft.  You do have to contact each credit bureau individually to put the credit freeze on your credit report.

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