People sent the CFPB 20,931 complaints about credit freezes and fraud alerts between October 2025 and September 2026, up 59.3% from 13,137 in the previous 12 months. That is faster than the 46.4% growth in all complaints to the CFPB over the same period. These are unverified complaints, not findings against any company.
The three national credit bureaus drew 56% of them: Equifax 4,358, Experian 3,899 and TransUnion 3,374. The fastest growth was at smaller consumer reporting companies. Complaints about LexisNexis rose from 802 to 2,559, CBC Companies from 1,146 to 2,367, and the bureaus outside the big three together went from 4,738 to 9,300, up 96%.
What a freeze and a fraud alert do
A security freeze stops a credit bureau from releasing your report to most new lenders, which makes it hard for someone to open an account in your name. Federal law has made freezes free since 2018, and you place and lift one separately at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. A fraud alert is lighter: it stays on your file for one year (seven years with an identity theft report) and asks lenders to verify your identity before they open credit. You place it at one bureau, and that bureau must tell the other two.
Those rules cover the three national bureaus. Specialty reporting companies such as LexisNexis, ChexSystems and NCTUE keep their own files, used for things like insurance, bank accounts and phone or utility service, and many let you freeze those files too, but you have to contact each one. That extra step is one reason complaints about smaller companies show up under this issue.
Complaints by company
| Company | Complaints, Oct 2025-Sep 2026 | Oct 2024-Sep 2025 | Change | Share of freeze complaints |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equifax | 4,358 | 3,368 | +29.4% | 20.8% |
| Experian | 3,899 | 2,622 | +48.7% | 18.6% |
| TransUnion | 3,374 | 2,409 | +40.1% | 16.1% |
| LexisNexis | 2,559 | 802 | +219.1% | 12.2% |
| CBC Companies | 2,367 | 1,146 | +106.5% | 11.3% |
| FNIS (ChexSystems) | 869 | 212 | +309.9% | 4.2% |
| NCTUE | 847 | 189 | +348.1% | 4.0% |
| IPAC'S Inc. | 499 | under 100 | n/a | 2.4% |
| MicroBilt | 233 | 196 | +18.9% | 1.1% |
| LCI Acquisition | 218 | 267 | -18.4% | 1.0% |
| CoreLogic | 215 | 266 | -19.2% | 1.0% |
| MIB Group | 212 | 45 | +371.1% | 1.0% |
The 12 companies named in the most complaints with the issue "Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes" from October 2025 to September 2026. "Under 100" means the company was not among the companies the CFPB API reports for the earlier period. Shares and changes are our calculations.
What the complaints are about
20,656 of the 20,931 complaints (98.7%) were filed under credit reporting. The rest came in under products such as credit cards (101) and checking or savings accounts (56). The issue is the category the consumer picks when filing, and it covers problems placing, lifting or removing a freeze or fraud alert, as well as complaints that an alert or freeze was not honored.
By state, Florida had the most complaints (3,523), then Texas (2,957) and Illinois (2,386). The biggest jumps were in Illinois, from 393 to 2,386, and Georgia, from 891 to 2,115. Per resident, Georgia was highest, at 19 complaints per 100,000 people (our calculation using Census 2024 population).
What these numbers are
These are complaints, not findings. The CFPB forwards each complaint to the company and publishes it, but it does not verify the facts in it. One person can file several complaints, and the product and issue are the categories the consumer picked. A company's count also depends on how many customers it has, so a large lender will draw more complaints than a small one without being worse.
The baseline matters. All complaints to the CFPB rose 46.4%, from 4,800,965 to 7,026,722, between the two 12-month periods, and most of that growth was in credit reporting. A company whose complaints grew by less than 46% lost ground against the database as a whole, even if its own count went up. The "vs. all complaints" column shows the gap in percentage points.
Source
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Complaint Database, complaints received October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 and October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, queried through the public API on October 23, 2026. Issue "Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes", all products. Population: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates. U.S. government data in the public domain. Changes, shares and comparisons with the all-complaints baseline are our calculations. Our tables are available under CC BY 4.0. Credit "My Credit Guide (mycreditguide.org)".
Steven Reynolds, "Credit Freeze and Fraud Alert Complaints," My Credit Guide, October 23, 2026, https://mycreditguide.org/data/credit-freeze-fraud-alert-complaints/.