A friend of mine recently had to spend substantial chunks of his week dealing with credit theft. As such things go it wasn’t all that bad but why not spend 30 minutes to save hours?
That same month I got an email for Privacy.com saying that my “Airport Parking” card was declined at “Sayan” (whoever that is). My friend spent hours. I was automatically protected.
One layer of defense is at the credit reporting bureaus which have had to clean up their act after the 2017 Equifax data breach lost my (and probably your) credit information.
Congress, goaded by irate citizens, required improvements, namely credit freezes. Since credit reporting bureaus make their money selling credit information their interests are somewhat in conflict with yours since you only want your credit score accessed when you want to rent something, get a credit card, etc.
There are several steps you can take to reduce your risk. You don’t have to do all of them or do them all at the same time to get the benefit. A few minutes could save you a lot of needless misery. The credit action links take you to the FTC site which is safer than figuring out the correct websites on your own.