joining me president of consumer education at consumer sesame.com, john ulzheimer. ezing is that a good way to try to protect yourself? >> so the credit freeze or more formally referred to as security freeze is basically like the fort knox of credit report protection. once you place the freeze on credit reports ain't nobody you do not have a relationship with getting into that credit report. gerri: better than fraud alert, better than anything else, credit freeze, security freeze. walk through how you do that because, i'm not really sure how to do it. i need to know whether it will cost me money. start with step one. who do i call? >> right. so this is very important when you're placing a security freeze on your credit reports which is very different than credit monitoring you actually have tor3 go to each of the three credit reporting agencies individually. there is no one-stop shop to plays a freeze across all three reports. each them independently equifax.com, experian.com, transunion.com. gerri: what i'm telling credit bureaus do not share information with anybod

with us john ulzheimer from creditsesame.com. heritage foundation economist. d a personal finance expert vera gibbons. welcome all. john, i will start with you. what do you make about this report some levin $.8 trillion in debts. are consumers getting in over their heads again? >> well it is good news wrapped in bad news. we all wanted consumers to loosen up the wallets to start spending money and acting as a catalyst for economy to get going. what we did not want to have happen unfortunately for lenders to become so lax with their underwriting standards, letting consumers in that are too risky for types of debts. the debts they're defaulting on auto loan and student loan. those are worst type of debts because, auto loan is secured. means they get your car after a couple of months. student loan, unless you die, you're going to end up having to pay it back because statutorily not disclarkable unless you have a incredible heartship to convince someone you got. gerri: as much as you want you can't get rid of it. >> that's it. gerri: cars and student loans. not mor