Official Annual Credit Report Site

[JDoors]

There is only one "official" site to receive your free annual credit report, here:

Official Annual Credit Report Site

Any other site may or may not provide unfettered access to your credit report. Some have been known to "accidentally" sign you up for unnecessary services, costing you money. The above link is the ONLY official site.

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So I decided to take my own advice and get my reports. You select up to three credit report agencies to visit. Essentially you click "Next" to go to the first, when you're done at that site there's a button on top of the page to return to the Annual Credit Report site. If you selected another agency to visit the first will be checked off and you just click "Next" again. Repeat until all three have been visited if you chose all three.

Each agency's site is slightly different. Each has a way to request additional services, for a price, so if you don't wish additional services watch out for that. Each site requests information to verify you are who you state you are (mine came up with requests for specific information concerning my mortgage and auto loans).

Each site allows and highly recommends that you print out the information (for all three of mine it totalled 30+ pages of information). One site assigns a report number you can use to return to the information at a later date, for a limited time (either print or write it down).

I had no adverse information so I didn't check out how to dispute information, but there were links and information on how to do that if you need it.

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One site has a service to e-mail you a reminder once a year to request your reports, I just added the task to my daily planner instead.

Edited December 28, 2005 by JDoors

[thesidekickcat]

Another suggestion is to stagger your reports... do one credit bureau each 4 months, that way you have more up to date information if something does happen that you need to know about faster.

Thanks for the reminder to do it.

Here is a link to the FTC article about the free credit reports, it also gives the phone number if you want to do it by phone, and the address if you want to do it by mail.

FTC article on how to get free credit reports

Pat

God bless everyone.

Edited December 29, 2005 by thesidekickcat