Just found this out today. CG spouse lost his wallet while on
vacation (he truly did) and we had to cancel and reapply for a lot of
documents. I found out from my Credit Card Company that I needed to
call Equifax to have a "Fraud Alert" added to my "file" so I did that.

I called and gave them HIS social security number and what will
happen is that anytime anyone (even HIM) tries to open a new account,
a phone call will be made to the home number I gave them to ask if it
is legit. Won't totally stop him from opening up other charge
accounts, but chances are I will get a phone call alerting me to the
attempt BEFORE he succeeds!

This was not the intent of the program, but it will work that way too
and I thought it might be of help for me and maybe for someone else
out there too.

The Equifax number was 1-800-680-7289 and the call took all of 2
minutes. It is automated.