You can freeze your credit for free by law. No credit lines can be opened while it’s frozen. To open a credit line, you go to the agency that they use and unfreeze it. They all support “unfreeze temporarily for X amount of time” as well, which makes it easy.

You have to do it at all 3, but once its frozen, just ask anyone who you want a loan from who they use, login to the site, then unfreeze it for a week.

Literally no concern about someone fucking with your credit after that.