Free Annual Credit Report

Free Credit Report

You have probably seen websites that claim to give you your credit report for free. Sometimes if you are careful you can get away with your credit report from these sites without paying anything, but more often than not you will actually be charged for your free credit report. It has become very important to know what is on your credit report, and many companies that are not affiliated with the three credit reporting agencies have begun to take advantage of all the people who want to check on their credit ranking by requesting a copy of their credit report.

Websites that claim to offer free credit reports actually tack on extra services or programs and make subscribing to them mandatory if you want your credit report. While you are not paying for the credit report itself, you still have to pay for additional services to get your report, or if you are allowed you can sometimes cancel before you are billed but not all sites allow you to do this. The bottom line is if you want a truly free copy of your credit report you have to go to annualcreditreport.com, the only website that offers a truly free copy of your credit report in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. You can request one copy of your credit report form TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax each year without having to purchase any type of additional services or programs or even provide your credit card information.

There are also websites that claim to give you a free copy of your credit report that do much more damage than just charging you for extras. Some sites are actually illegitimate and are designed to collect personal information and then use it for malicious purposes such as identity theft. These sites look like any other credit report site and collect information such as name, date of birth, social security number, and address that would otherwise be needed to obtain your credit report so nothing seems out of place. If you are using a third party website to get your credit report make sure the website it legitimate and never respond to ads or emails claiming to send you to a free credit report website as this is how many of them rope in unsuspecting customers.

There are a few ways to tell if the website you are using to get your credit report is legitimate if you do decide to use one. You should always make sure that the company has contact information listed on their website such as an address and telephone number. You should also only disclose personal information on websites that are encrypted and secure; you can tell this by a lock or key depending on your browser at the top of the address bar. You should also look for spelling, grammatical and other errors in the websites copy or address which are dead giveaways that a website is not legitimate. Knowing what is on your free credit report is important to safeguard your credit rating, but you must also be careful where you go to get your report.