 TITLE: Does a Credit Freeze Hurt Your Credit Score? CONTENT: How Does a Credit Freeze Work?\n------------------------------\nFreezing your credit is something you can do to help prevent identity thieves or other fraudsters from securing credit in your name. A credit freeze blocks access to your credit reports, and to credit scores based on data in those reports. Because checking your credit report and credit score is typically the first step in processing any credit application, having credit freezes in place at all three credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax) is an effective way to stop unauthorized credit accounts.\nCredit freezes also block authorized access to your credit reports, however, so they can complicate the processing and approval of your legitimate loan or credit card applications.\nThe national credit bureaus will activate (and deactivate) a credit freeze for free upon request. You must contact each bureau separately to freeze its respective credit report; when you do so, you'll be assigned a PIN or password to use when requesting removal of the freeze.\nIf you freeze your credit reports, you'll need to unfreeze (or \"thaw\") them for lenders to be able to process your legitimate credit applications. You'll also have to remove a freeze to grant access to landlords, cellphone providers, insurance companies, car rental agencies and other nonlender parties that perform credit checks as part of their business practices.\nAs long as you have your PIN for each of the credit bureaus, you can request removal of your credit freezes by phone and have them lifted within one hour. You can remove the freezes permanently or request a temporary suspension of the freeze for a specified number of hours or days. If you lose your PIN, you still can have the freeze removed or suspended, but the process will take longer. END