Identity Theft

Here is a great way to protect yourself against Identity Theft. It’s free, and it forms your first line of defense. It’s your credit report. Future employment opportunites, home ownership and a myriad of other factors all depend on your good credit. Identity theft can ruin your credit,

Did you know that one annual Free Credit Report is actually provided by the major credit reporting companies? So, you can actually ‘cut-to-the-chase’ and by-pass all the other e-mail offers you receive from your bank or others, and ignore those tireless TV commercials about Renaissance fairs, and living in your in-laws basement. Why pay for a service when you can get it free?

Not only is it free, it’s quick, easy and secure. You must go this central site: https://www.annualcreditreport.com . This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the official site to help consumers obtain their free credit report.

These companies caution “Please be aware of how you arrived at this site.” To ensure that you are visiting their legitimate site, they recommend that you type https://www.annualcreditreport.com directly into the address bar on your browser. They also ensure “you will never receive an email directly from the Annual Credit Report Request Service.” You can find this by reading their Security Policy once, and if you visit this site.

This is an excellent way to guard against identity theft. In today’s world, it is prudent to annually monitor and review your credit report. If you find a problem… something that appears on the report that you know absolutely nothing about, you should contact the reporting company immediately. They will counsel you and work with you.

Once you are on their site, you can request your free credit report online, by phone or through the mail. Free credit reports requested online are viewable immediately upon authentication of your identity. Credit reports requested by phone or mail will be processed within 15 days of receiving your request.

If this is something you normally would not do, you probably should. Get it done now. Identity theft is a real problem. You really never know how someone got access to your social-security-number, but we freely give this information to others all the time. It could have been copied by a clerk at a job you had five or six years ago, and passed on for payment to some nefarious third party for profit. Checking you credit annually is a very prudent thing to do.