The best outcome is to have minor fraud (someone tried and failed to open an account in your name, or your name+address appears in a data dump somewhere) occur because then you can register a fraud alert and credit freeze in all the agencies which stops a lot of nonsense (random junk mail, risk of actual fraudulent accounts getting established) for a year or so by enforcing extra authentication steps.
I wish I could put a permanent fraud alert on my credit accounts, but would probably have to hire a lawyer or something.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve signed up for all 3 bureaus and enabled the credit freeze. My understanding, and experience years later, is that it is still frozen. I had to unfreeze a specific one last year for an auto loan.
Is there something else I’m missing that’s only temporary?
The fraud alert adds a requirement that potential lenders call a phone number added to the credit file to authorize new loans/accounts, making it significantly less likely that fraud can take place.
I understand that, I’m curious if reporting fraud activity helps prevent that in some way like the parent comment seems to suggest, if only for a year.
I wish I could put a permanent fraud alert on my credit accounts, but would probably have to hire a lawyer or something.