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Absolutely Free Credit Reports

With fraud and identity theft rampant nowadays, it’s essential to know your credit score and monitor your credit reports, but you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Avoid any service that charges fees to provide your credit reports. Also, beware of online sites that offer free reports, but charge you for a product or service in order to receive your reports.

To put it simply, a credit report is an overview of your payment history. It lists your accounts and balances, as well as your payment behavior for each, such as missed or late payments. Your credit report is not a credit score. A credit score, also called FICO, is a three-digit number commonly used by lenders, employers and insurers that gauges your creditworthiness. They’re partially calculated by information found on your credit reports, so it’s important to make sure that your reports are accurate.

Become familiar with the names Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. These are the three major national credit-reporting agencies that collect and sell reports outlining consumer financial behavior. Since these agencies may collect and report different consumer information, it’s wise to review all three at least once a year to check for any fraudulent activities on your report, so that you can act on them as soon as possible.

Thanks to an amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, these three agencies are required by law to provide you with a free credit report once every 12 months. This service is not automatically provided; you must request your report, but it’s always free when you use AnnualCreditReport.com, the only federally authorized internet source for truly free credit reports.

To order your free annual credit report, visit www.AnnualCreditReport.com or call 1-877-322-8228. You can also complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and snail mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. When you order your report, you will be required provide identifying information, including your name, address, Social Security Number, and date of birth. Additionally, you may need to provide information that only you would know to verify your identity and help prevent fraud. Note that the reports are free, but credit scores are not.