[fnordpiglet]

You can do this in America. It’s called a credit freeze. A problem is credit freezes can also be fraudulently lifted, but serve as a decent barrier for most run of the mill mass frauds. They’re virtually unknown and require you to independent contact each individual credit bureaus to both freeze then unfreeze.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-credit-fre...

[greenyoda]

> They’re virtually unknown...

I (and millions of other people) learned how to do a credit freeze after having our personal info leaked in the Equifax data breach of 2017:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Having that credit freeze saved me from at least two attempted frauds since then - I was notified by two credit card issuers that credit card applications in my name that I had never made were rejected because my credit file was frozen.

[oxygen_crisis]

I wish I wrote down the un-freeze PIN codes or stored them in Bitwarden when I did this six years ago.

I'm dreading trying to recall the PINs I used when the time comes to un-freeze them.

Still glad I did it, though. However burdensome the PIN recovery process will be, I'm sure it's less stress than dealing with fraud.