Consumer complaint received 2018-12-11
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes — 
Company: EQUIFAX, INC. (PA)

Recently I tried to open a new checking account via the internet with a credit union in another state where I have had other accounts for quite a few years. I received back a message that my credit report could not be accessed and that I needed to 'unfreeze ' my credit report before the new account could be opened. I was later informed that Equifax was the ONLY reporting agency that they would accept. Due to the Equifax data breach during the summer of 2017, which directly involved my account, my credit reports are 'frozen ' at all three of the national credit reporting agencies.

I logged into my Equifax on-line account so that I could grant access to the credit union to my credit report. In a previous situation regarding a credit card application, I had, from a DIFFERENT credit reporting agency, obtained a 'single-use pin ' number for granting securely restricted access to the credit card firm. In the Equifax on-line system, I was REQUIRED to open a NEW " Freeze Management '' account in order to change my freeze preferences. As an integral part of this new account process, I was confronted with a complex and unsettling set of " Terms and Conditions '', including the following sections from the provided Equifax documents : ================================ " YOU MUST ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT BEFORE YOU WILL BE PERMITTED TO REGISTER '' " Credit Report Control will not prevent access to Your credit report at any other consumer reporting agency, and will not prevent access to Your Equifax credit report by companies like XXXX, XXXX which provide You with access to your credit report or credit score or monitor your credit file ; Federal, state and local government agencies ; companies reviewing your application for employment ; companies that have a current account or relationship with You, and collection agencies acting on behalf of those whom You owe ; for fraud detection and prevention purposes ; and companies that wish to make pre-approved offers of credit or insurance to You. '' ================================ I was totally uncomfortable with these REQUIRED Terms, but I went ahead and opened the freeze management application because I thought I had no alternative. I was totally surprised that in this new account, I had NO option to limit access to my credit report to an individual entity! I only had TWO options : 1 ) Open my credit report for ANY entity normally able to gain credit report information, but restrict it only to a specified window of dates.

2 ) Open my credit report for ANY entity normally able to gain credit report information permanently. 

There was NO option to limit access to a single entity. In light of the previous Equifax breach of security, in MY PERSONAL OPINION AS REGARDS TO MY ACCOUNT, this is a very poor security practice. 

I subsequently called the Equifax Customer Service phone number and talked to an Equifax agent. I told the agent that I desired to limit access to my credit report only to my credit union, and she stated that I " should be able to do that '', to which I wholeheartedly agreed. She walked me through the on-line application and told me to check the option for limiting access to specific users, and was surprised when I told her that " there is NO SUCH OPTION ''. She had to consult privately with the supervisor, and then told me that it depended on the " state '' of my residence, which is Pennsylvania. This totally surprised me, that as a resident of Pennsylvania, I was limited to personally-unacceptable security practices regarding access to my credit report. 

Since, for security reasons, I refuse to unfreeze my Equifax or any other of my credit report accounts unless access is restricted for strict purposes which are authorized by me on a case-by-case basis, I was not able to open my new checking account at that time. 

My next step was to call the Pennsylvania agency that deals with Banking and Securities, but they only referred me to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau ( CFPB ). When I called CFPB I was told that I could file this complaint, but also that it might be possible to for me to enable a system where access to my account could only be authorized by a phone call to me at my designated phone number. However, this requires coordinating a call schedule between me and the requesting party, which can be rather inconvenient. The 'single-use pin ' system I had used previously was extremely convenient, secure, and effective. 

I did open the Equifax web site and was AGAIN confronted with the REQUIREMENT to open yet ANOTHER NEW account in their " Lock and Alert '' system, with ANOTHER set of Terms and Conditions! I quickly gave up on that, and since then I have learned that if you do the same process via TELEPHONE, there is NO requirement to agree to lengthy confusing Terms and Conditions, and very little personal information is required and stored in an account file! 

This whole process with Equifax has been, for me, exceedingly frustrating.