Protecting Your Credit With: Equifax

1. Equifax’s Products and Services: Consumer
2. Equifax’s Products and Services: Commercial
3. Equifax Fraud Alerts
4. Equifax Credit Freezes

Equifax is a global data, analytics, and technology company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1899, the company was formed by a group of tailors from Great Britain who joined forces to share information about consumers who didn’t pay their debts. It became a publicly held corporation in 1965. Today, the company operates or has investments in 24 countries throughout North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.

Equifax is most well-known as one of the top three credit reporting agencies (along with Experian and TransUnion). Equifax uses items from consumers’ credit accounts to create credit reports, which lenders and creditors then use to determine whether or not to extend a loan or credit.

Equifax’s Products and Services: Consumer

Equifax offers two tiers of credit monitoring and identity protection services geared toward consumers: Value and Premium. These services range from basic credit report access to more detailed and intensive credit monitoring and identity theft prevention tools.

Value Products

Value products are designed for cost-conscious consumers who need regular or occasional access to their credit score and who might need to keep tabs on their accounts.

Pricing as of September 30, 2021.

Premium Products

If you’re looking to gain access to credit reports from all three bureaus at once or need some more robust identity theft protection tools, Equifax’s Premium line could be the right choice. You can choose from the following options. 

Pricing as of September 30, 2021.

Equifax’s Products and Services: Commercial

Like its credit bureau counterparts, Equifax also delivers services, especially for businesses in a wide range of industries. As a cloud-native global data and analytics technology company, Equifax aims to help companies create data-driven solutions that drive revenue and deliver better customer experiences.

Equifax’s extensive menu of commercial products and services include the following:

• Customer acquisition
• Credit data reports for both commercial and consumer customers
• Credit monitoring and identity protection for businesses
• Solutions for growing existing business
• Management of regulatory compliance
• Management of workforce from talent acquisition through the entire employment cycle
• Mitigation of risk
• Fraud prevention
• Debt recovery services
• Third-party verification services to ensure the information provided during the course of business is accurate

Equifax Fraud Alerts

 Equifax allows you to place a fraud alert on your account if you have reason to suspect or anticipate fraudulent activity. That means lenders and creditors will need to take additional steps to verify your identity if you (or someone else) attempt to request credit. Generally, the lender or creditor will try to contact you personally to confirm that you’ve made the credit request.

Equifax offers two types of fraud alerts, both of which are free: initial and extended. An initial fraud alert is free and lasts for one year, while an extended fraud alert lasts for seven years and removes you from credit card and insurance offers for five years. To qualify for an extended alert, you’ll need to provide an FTC Identity Theft report or police report.

Equifax Credit Freezes

Equifax also offers you the ability to freeze your credit for free, which will prevent lenders and creditors from accessing your Equifax credit report when someone attempts to open credit in your name. The only catch is that you will not be able to apply for credit while the credit freeze is in place. You can temporarily lift the freeze if you want to apply for credit and then re-freeze your credit report.

If you want to freeze credit reports from the other two bureaus, you must contact Experian and TransUnion directly.

Unlike the Lock and Alert option that Equifax offers for free, credit freezes are federally regulated. That means you’ll have to apply for and wait for the freeze to reflect on your account, which can take up to 24 hours.