A few days ago I wrote about how the credit bureaus had to finally get behind the new credit freeze laws now available in dozens of states.

That prompted an email from a reader who wanted to know if a credit freeze is the same as a fraud alert. And I thought it was a pretty good question that seems to confuse a lot of people.

There is a major difference between the two: a fraud alert is essentially a note that you attach to your credit report, through a credit bureau, that alerts any potential creditor that you may be the victim of identity theft and that they should confirm your identification before granting any new credit in your name.

A credit freeze is designed to prevent anyone from getting any credit in your name. For creditors to grant new credit they first have to do a credit check on your report, and a freeze blocks that. No credit check, no new credit.

If you want to allow a specific creditor to run a credit check on your behalf (because you want to apply for a new credit card or a car loan), you’ll need to “unfreeze” your report using a PIN or password that will be provided to you when you first initiate the freeze.

Hope that clears up any confusion. More to come.