[bradknowles]

No, it won’t stop them. Plenty of places ignore any freezes, and the bureaus themselves have been known to change the language required to get what a normal human being would call a “freeze” actually put on their accounts.

After all, it’s not your information that you’re asking for a freeze on — they created that information, and even though it’s about you, unfortunately you don’t actually own that information and the credit bureau can’t make any money if they can’t sell the information about you to whomever may want to come ask for it. You are not the customer, you are the product being sold. And credit bureaus don’t like products being sold that interfere with their business model.

But calling up each and every credit bureau in existence and asking them to put a freeze on your account, well that might actually help in some cases, so it’s probably still worth doing. Just don’t operate under any illusions regarding how strict that freeze will be, or how long it will last.