In this sub-reddit, we have an unwritten "rule #1" which is to always pay your card in-full and on-time. If that's rule #1, then this should be rule #0: **Your credit reports should be kept frozen, and "thawed" or "lifted" only as needed** (i.e. when applying for a new credit card, car loan, apartment rental, etc.). 

In this day and age, especially after the [2017 Equifax data breach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach), you should simply assume that someone has or can easily get your social security number and relevant personal info, with which they could open a credit card or other credit account in your name.

It costs nothing to freeze your credit reports, nor to "lift" the freeze for a day or two as needed when you want to apply for a new credit card or something similar. It's a minor inconvenience that takes a few minutes of your time, and can save you from a massive, life-altering headache. 

Relevant pages to place a freeze at the "big 3" credit bureaus (the ones used when applying for credit cards):

https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/

https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

The most "tricky" aspect to this is making sure you **don't lose the relevant info** (i.e. passwords) needed to manage a freeze. If you don't use a password manager, I strongly recommend you start. Use randomly generated passwords for each credit bureau. Do not use variations of a password you can remember. You should arguably not share any of these passwords with anyone -- **including family members** (there are instances of parents opening credit cards in their child's name and racking up huge debts). If someone you trust wants to help you by doing a new credit card application for you, they can tell you, you can "lift" the freeze on your own, after which they can proceed with the application. You can follow up on whether they opened the accounts they said they would by checking your credit reports for free (once every 12 months).

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports

I'm not a credit specialist and will likely not be replying to questions below, but this sub has some extremely knowledgeable users who hopefully can answer questions and provide other good advice to help keep you safe, such as free credit monitoring tools. 

Additionally, see r/Credit and r/PersonalFinance, including the links in their sidebars with excellent resources (visible using a desktop web browser).


Edit: A full list of credit bureaus (8 in total) can be found in the sidebar of r/Credit (visible with desktop browser view). I suggest freezing all of them. Chex is often used when opening bank accounts, so be prepared to do a temporary lift on Chex if applying for a checking or savings account. 

On that note, [some banks do hard pulls from one of the big 3 bureaus just to open a deposit account](https://www.doctorofcredit.com/bank-accounts/is-opening-a-bank-account-a-soft-or-hard-pull/), which is highly relevant to regular users here who may be concerned about credit inquiries affecting new card approval odds. Having your reports frozen means you won't get an unexpected hard inquiry (a protection you *don't* get with free credit reporting).
If you need a password manager I highly recommend *BITWARDEN* or LastPass

Edited because I'm anand typed the wrong thing 😭