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A relative migrated to the US and obtained permanent residence, then citizenship. They'd like to freeze their credit, but they don't yet have any to freeze. Since they now have a social security number and all the rest of the documentation that can be stolen, we'd like to figure this out.

There are a couple of things we wonder about. The first is, do we need to get loans / secured credit cards to even have them in the system? Trying to freeze with Experian etc. now returns errors (they can't be found). Another question is, do they need to establish a long credit history? I know when I froze my credit they asked about addresses and loans going decades back. Can they freeze it if there's not a long history to verify against?

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  • Why would you care about protecting something you don't have ?
    – xyious
    Commented May 27, 2020 at 17:48
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    @xyious I've asked this question too, either here or on another forum. The answer was to the effect that security by obscurity isn't a good idea, and the info is bound to make it into the system sometime, so it's a good idea to protect preemptively.
    – Ken - Enough about Monica
    Commented May 27, 2020 at 19:13
  • This isn't security by obscurity. In order to freeze your credit score you need to have a credit score. It seems backwards (to me anyway) to establish credit just so you can freeze it. If you're worried about your credit card information being stolen when you don't have a credit card it would seem weird to open a credit card account just so you can shred the card....
    – xyious
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 17:02
  • @xyious - they will be in the system someday. We'd rather find out before the random scammer.
    – Ken - Enough about Monica
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 17:27

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