Take Advantage of Free Credit Reports

By Lyle Hansen Jerome County,

UI Extension Educator/Personal Finance

As of September 1, 2005, thanks to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 (FACTA), all Americans are able to obtain one (1) free copy of their credit report from each of the three (3) major credit bureaus:  Equifax, Experian and Trans Union once a year.  This is great news for all of us! To get a credit report in the past we either had to be denied credit and then we could request a free report or we had to pay $9.50.  It is also a good idea to check your credit report every year to help guard against identity theft, look for accounts we did not open, look for discrepancies between credit bureaus, identify accounts that are still open that we thought we closed and identify any unexplained transactions.  Ordering your free credit reports does not affect your credit or credit score making it that much more of a reason to obtain your free credit reports. 

How to order a free copy of your credit report:

The three major credit bureaus have set up a central website www.annualcreditreport.com, a toll-free telephone number 1-877-322-8228, and a mailing address Annual Credit Report Request Service,   P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281 through which you can order your free annual report.  If you want to request your free credit report through the mail print and use the form from www.ftc.gov/credit.  You can also find lots of useful information about credit on the website.  The credit bureaus have set up the www.annualcreditreport.com website to guard your privacy using security protocols designed to protect your personally identifiable information from unauthorized access or alteration.  They us measures that include physical and technological security and encryption to protect you while ordering your credit report on line.

When ordering your free credit report make sure you only use the ways listed above because there are imposter websites out there that claim to offer free credit reports but often have strings attached that end up costing consumers money.  Some imposter sites have free report in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell www.annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these imposter sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.  The only website under the law authorized to fill free credit report requests is www.annualcreditreport.com.

Ordering your three free credit reports each year will help you make sure that your personal credit is accurate and will help you monitor for possible identity theft.

For further information or questions you can contact Lyle Hansen, University of Idaho Extension Educator in Jerome County at 324-7578 or lhansen@uidaho.edu

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