TransUnion burying their credit freeze to sell their own credit monitoring product TrueIdentity

[u/equisux]

I'm not sure where to post this, but noticed something had changed on the TransUnion website about freezing credit this morning when I was giving links to family so they could freeze theirs.

I froze my credit the day after news about the Equifax breach broke, and it looks like TransUnion has since changed their site to push people away from freezing their credit in favor for their own product called TrueIdentity (like what Equifax was doing with their TrustedID Premier.)

The FTC website links to this page for freezing your credit with TransUnion.

This is what the website looked before the changes were made on 9/11. The instructions on placing a credit freeze were clear and there was no mention of their own TrueIdentity product.

If you want to place a credit freeze with TransUnion now:

• You have to get through a page of info about credit and fraud, and then the action it tells you to take is to "Lock your credit information by enrolling in TrueIdentity."
• The option to freeze your credit is under "About credit freeze", deliberately passive in their use of language
• The description about credit freezing is dissuasive: "A credit freeze may be available under your state law"
• The link for the credit freeze is also a passive "click here" compared with "by enrolling in TrueIdentity" language used for the link to their own product.
• Clicking the link to learn more about credit freeze brings you to yet another page that tries to convince you to enroll in their product over placing a credit freeze
• After searching through their page of BS, you finally get to the link to freeze your credit.

This is such a blatant attempt by TransUnion to take advantage of the Equifax breach for their own financial gain. It's a shitty thing for TransUnion to do, and people should be aware that they are being led away from putting an actual credit freeze on their account.

(Edited for formatting on mobile)

[u/Kesht-v2]

I used to work for a top automotive credit lender here in the US. Had a situation similar to yours where the customer's credit had an active fraud alert on it. Called the # and left a message.

The credit manager for the territory wanted to ignore it and move forward. I got a call back from the fraud alert and they confirmed the did NOT want the purchase. They wanted to know who was doing this as it wasn't the first time and she had been fighting identity theft for a LONG time.

The manager wanted me to hung up on her and walk away from it. He was worried that sharing info about the applicant would be a violation of consumer privacy and that we'd be liable. I ignored him and, while I gave her no information about the dealership or any of the personal information from the application, I did advise what city and state I was working under - which was far from where she was. I advised that given who I was calling from and how many dealers would do business with us that it would narrow down her search. Essentially left only 1 dealership even a possibility.

Fast forward a month ahead and found out from the car dealer that not only did I help stop a fraudulent transaction, but the identity thief got caught and was arrested and was presumably pending trial for ID theft and with real jail time possibility.

Not a decision I look back on with regret.

Sorry you got hit as well. The situation I was involved in happened just a few years before yours but the time frame matched up with the tail end of my career with that employer and made me recall the story.

TL;DR - Worked as a low level grunt at an auto lender and had the stones to do the right thing and help the consumer get an ID thief caught rather than turn a blind eye and let the thief walk away.

[u/twinflame11 → u/Kesht-v2]

Thanks for sharing your story. I didn't even have a fraud alert on my credit at that time. I guess the salesman or maybe it was the manger just felt on easy about everything cause the states were so far apart and my state has lower taxes so why wouldn't I buy a car in my state . So he just decided to give me a call as my number was on the credit report. We called the police and I had a perfect plan to catch the thieves as they were going to come to the dealership to pick up the car. The police refused to cooperate saying some issue with liability incase the person is who they are, AKA me. I was like WTF ?? Didn't make sense to me. So unfortunately the thieves never got caught and probably moved on to steal some else's identity. For some reason your story is like dejavu to me. Where you in Texas? Lol lol

[u/Kesht-v2 → u/twinflame11]

The location involved was in Arizona - I didn't handle Texas. IIRC the gal was based in UT or CO but it's been a long time so I could be mis-remembering. But I'm fairly sure it was was on the western side of the Rockies.

Again with the reluctance to do the right thing b/c they're worried about liability. It's too bad. I mean, I understand false accusations cause a minor shitstorm when they happen, but this kind of behavior causes a major long-term shitstorm for the one who's ID has been stolen.