Even if you’re covered by a credit monitoring service, you may want to keep an eye on your credit report – and you can still do that for free at www.annualcreditreport.com. That’s the only official website, so don’t be fooled by other “free” claims.
At the site, you can get one free report annually from each of the three major agencies. Why bother? Identity theft is a multi-billion dollar industry, and checking your credit rating is one of the best ways to protect yourself. You might also be surprised at the number of mistakes on credit reports. Relatives or even non-relatives with the same (or similar) last name could have their credit information jumbled with yours. Individual companies could have incorrectly reported a negative credit occurrence (in the form of a delinquent payment or nonpayment) to the reporting agencies. Reviewing your credit report is a way to find and fix those issues.
If you find an error, both the credit reporting company and the company that provided the information about you are responsible for making corrections. You’ll have to submit a written report and you’ll get written results when corrections are made.
