What does it mean to freeze an SSN, and how does one go about it? I'm familiar with freezing credit (through the big 3 credit score companies), but that doesn't sound sufficient to protect against a lot of what you're describing.
I think he started with online available info (I believe Reddit has a good identity theft community), but the thing is that notices keep coming long after fraud has been committed. So every week he would find out there are more things he was on the hook for.
Eventually he hired a lawyer to help him out, there are so many reporting agencies (for subprime loans etc) that you need to reach out to.
Long term a new SSN will be issued for him, but there is a lot of cleanup before that.
They said in their first comment that their drivers license had been stolen in the mail, which is what started all of it. I'd imagine they either went and bought their SSN from someone who had a collection of them from hacks or they used information they were able to get from places that ask for verification but show a few digits (e.g. "confirm your SSN: *-*-1234") to narrow down and then brute force different numbers at different sites until they got it.
There is no way to freeze an SSN. As you pointed out, all you can really freeze are credit files. In some circumstances, victims of identity theft can obtain a new SSN.
What does it mean to freeze an SSN, and how does one go about it? I'm familiar with freezing credit (through the big 3 credit score companies), but that doesn't sound sufficient to protect against a lot of what you're describing.