Free Credit Report and the Hook

Three major nationwide consumer reporting companies, (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) have in their files about you can impact everything from your mortgage rates to whether you get a job or not, impacts you, your credit report is important. There are a number of websites and ads claiming Free Credit Report.

When you look at the fine print, you may find that your free credit report is actually anything but free. Oh sure, your freecreditreport is free to access any time you want, if you are paying monthly fee. This is so pervasive that the Federal Trade Commission actually has put out a publication about this. To directly quote the Federal Trade Commission:

"A Warning About "Imposter" Websites

Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law -- annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer "free credit reports," "free credit scores," or "free credit monitoring" are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the "free" product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly "free" service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don't cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

Some "imposter" sites use terms like "free report" in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these "imposter" sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.

Annualcreditreport.com and the nationwide consumer reporting companies will not send you an email asking for your personal information. If you get an email, see a pop-up ad, or get a phone call from someone claiming to be from annualcreditreport.com or any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies, do not reply or click on any link in the message. It's probably a scam. Forward any such email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov."

It is important to keep up on your credit report. And yes, you can as you see from the FTC's own words, by law, get a freecreditreport. With identity theft becoming so pervasive, this monitoring is mandatory.

Tcat Houser is an international trainer and author. Being an author of a highly regarded security book did not prevent him from being on the wrong end of identity theft. (The bad guys harvested a Web server from a small company he ordered from). His research revealed that the odds of a US citizen having to deal with identity theft at least once in their life, is 100%.

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