Protect Your Credit - Step 3
Time for the third step in my series on protecting your credit. If you want to see them all visit my identity theft category.
Step 3: Monitor your credit report.
One of the other great ways to protect yourself again identity theft is to monitor your credit report. There are services that you can signup for to do this. Some of them include other things like security alerts, access to your credit score, etc. However, there is also a free option.
The three credit reporting agencies are required by law to supply you with one free copy of your credit report each year (not necessarily your score, they make you pay for this). Simply visit http://www.annualcreditreport.com to claim it.
Important Time Saving Rant:
BTW, don’t be tricked by sites like freecreditreport.com, who try and make you think you are getting your “free credit report”, but are really signing you up for their “credit monitoring” service “Free Trial” which will automatically bill your card. If you are asked for billing information/credit card anywhere along the way, you are on the wrong site! Even though the site has no prices on it (at least I couldn’t find them, and I looked pretty hard), you will find your credit card charged unless you call to cancel. Freecreditreport.com is run by Experian, one of the three credit reporting agencies, that is legally required to give you a free report once a year. I have to admit, I saw the ads on TV and was duped at first, I cancelled and so far haven’t seen a charge. But don’t make the same mistake, it is a pain to call and cancel. I think this is a terrible way to conduct business!
End Rant
You will be asked to enter some person information and then you will be presented with a set of three checkboxes for which agency you want to pull your report from. I recommend only pulling from one agency, and pulling your report three times a year (again Outlook re-occurring tasks are great for this). Basically the reports are going to all be very similar, so you won’t gain much by pulling them all at one time.
Once you have selected an agency to get your report from, you will be redirected through to your report. PRINT A COPY. The agency is only obligated to provide it to you, not to store it so you can come back and look at it anytime you want. Then just review the report in detail, making sure you recognize all the accounts and such. If you see something that doesn’t click, dig into it right away.
I think the three steps I have outlined so far are some good basic steps you can take to help protect your identity. If you have any other ideas, submit a comment, or send me an email I would love to hear your ideas.
Time spent on this step: 30 minutes.
Time spent so far: 1 Hour, 15 minutes.