Dossier
new-account fraud
Coverage of new-account fraud in the Nexus archive.
- You have a credit freeze. It still isn’t enough
Credit freezes, while free since 2018, are insufficient to fully protect against identity fraud. The 2026 Identity Fraud Study reports $27.3 billion in losses and a 31% rise in new-account fraud, with synthetic identity fraud exploiting gaps by combining real SSNs with fake identities. Credit freezes fail to block these attacks, as they bypass traditional credit file checks.