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“Free” credit report. Is it a scam?
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.
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