Reminder for your annual credit check
Posted by Frugal on December 11th, 2007
It’s near the end of year. Time to sanity check your finances.
I just pulled my free credit reports from annualcreditreport.com which is a site mandated by government to provide annual free credit reports for consumers. Since there are 3 reporting agencies, I normally just check my credit reports twice or three times a year by spacing out the check every four months. This way you can catch the credit fraud in about four months before the identity theft becomes totally out of control. And if you worry about remembering which credit agency you used last time, it’s not a problem. The site will deny your access if you have checked your credit report from the same agency within the same year.
And yeah, mine and my wife’s have all checked out clean. I even closed a couple of accounts that I was not using at all.
Of course, you can buy any of those monthly credit guard services, so that you don’t need to review your own credit reports once in awhile. I opt for these free reports. This is just another inconvenience and precaution needed caused by rampant frauds in our society.
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December 12th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Annual credit checks are a really good idea. I know someone who was scammed once and never looked into it; a year later, she found that she had tons more accounts open and being used under her name! Thanks for the link to the government mandated website too - I’ve only used the other free sites.
Justin
DebtAndFinance.com
June 17th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Thanks Frugal for sharing this one. I tried to access annualcreditreport.com but it is only accessible through ISPs (Internet Service Providers)located within the United States and its territories. Do you know by any chance, how can I avail this one even that I’m on a vacation in another country outside US?
-Joanne