Personal Finance 💸

Indeed you should, but it’s still insufficient. Musk did not get the data from the credit bureau. Freezing credit data does not prevent Musk’s exfiltration. Freezing your data also does not change the data. E.g. If a debt collector knows where you bank (from a leak), they can still tap that account directly even if your credit file is frozen. If a prospective employer knows your health history, you may be passed over for a job. Knowing your home address is useful for stalkers. All that info that was leaked is valuable to social engineers in countless creative exploits.

(edit) One of the intended exploits by Musk is to manipulate elections. How do you think freezing your credit bureau file mitigates election manipulation when the data was taken from the social security administration? Even if Musk were to have harvested the credit bureaus, the credit freezes would not have impeded him.

In any case, the best move w.r.t banking is to find a bank that is not a member of any of the credit bureaus. In principle, an account that extends no credit does not require credit worthiness. But banks are sloppy because consumers are pushovers. Banks systemically exchange info with credit bureaus anyway b/c consumers are not smart enough to demand otherwise.