I was recently told by a friend that one of those sites offering free credit reports was charging his credit card every month to “monitor” his credit. Not very “free” if you ask me.
The day he told me about this I came across an article by Hank at MyInvestingBlog entitled: What do I lose by not going to the “certified” annual credit report site? This prompted me to do further research on these scams so they don’t happen to anyone else.
The FTC published a report about these fake credit report sites. The FTC also has a list of precautions to take when following up on a free credit report service provider. Everyone is entitled to a free credit report once every 12 months and the Only Official Website is annualcreditreport.com
According to the FTC…
“A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. But there’s only one online source authorized to do so. That’s annualcreditreport.com. Beware of other sites that may look and sound similar.”
After doing a simple google search, there are a couple free credit score estimators. FICO Score Estimators powered by myFICO, and a Credit Survey at MSNMoney.com. They don’t pull a real credit score but they can give you a pretty good idea, which is what most people are looking for. If you are interested in looking up your real credit score you should go to annualcreditreport.com.
I hope this information is helpful and that no one else gets duped into this scam.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Thanks for the link love – another site to check out is Credit Karma. Rumor has it that a soft pull will be made on the lookup; but still better than a hard pull – best bet is the site you listed though! thanks!
April 7th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Yea I used freecreditreport.com or something once and I got 3 credit checks. After I used those three I started getting a lot of charges on my credit card which I had to dispute. I know you can get one through your bank too, which is probably the safest bet.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
yeah…. i had warned your friend about it when he mentioned he was going to use that service. I told him he was better off spending the 45 dollars to get a real credit score from MyFico.com which pulls ur score from all 3 credit bureaus and explains to you your score (if you are a newbie). I get in the habbit of pulling my credit score once a year on the same month and just verify the info/dispute any wrong accounts/activities.
After all, $45 a year is a small fee to pay for peace of mind that no one is using your credit.
-Mario.
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