More than a year ago, doing a credit freeze was a very popular topic on our show. However, Clark recently received several calls from listeners that indicated people are still unfamiliar with the basics of a credit freeze.

A credit freeze is, in essence, the cheapest insurance policy there's ever been against economic identity theft.

You can ignore those ads you see for both the wholly legitimate LifeLock and those sleazoids at FreeCreditReport. That's like going into battle without enough weapons. A credit freeze, however, is the ultimate weapon -- even if a criminal manages to get hold of your sensitive financial information.

Recently, Clark had a situation where he was out of town and somebody wanted his mail. He had a locking mailbox, but the criminal took a hammer or crowbar to it and beat it open! Even though the criminal made off with account numbers, the Howards have not suffered true economic identity theft because they had their credit freezes in place.

A credit freeze basically locks down your credit and prevents anyone from opening new lines of credit as if they were you. Credit freezes can be done online with each of the three main credit bureaus for a cost of anywhere from zero dollars to $10 depending on your age and/or other circumstances.

Once your credit freeze is in place, you receive a secret code that only you know. That's the part that prevents criminals from breaching your credit -- even if they know your Social Security number, mother's maiden name and other identifying info.

You can use your secret code to temporarily thaw your credit anytime for a nominal fee.