AnnualCreditReport.com

Hermitism wrote: »

edit: I actually put a freeze on my credit, just to be safe.

A generally very good idea, I (we) would also opine. It is a bit of a hassle on occasions when you want/need someone to assess your credit history, though. We ran afoul of that when we bought Mrs. H's Honda way back in the low-interest days of 2016. We financed it because the interest rate was (not zero, but) hyper low, so it was cheaper than paying cash (which, for us, would be raised from investment income - don't like to do that if not necessary).
In those days, though, it was just as easy to prove we would at least sometimes pay for things by showing a couple of (paid?) bills -- property tax and utilities, if memory serves, so that's what we did (in lieu of unfreezing the credit reporting). Honda Credit wanted the business, you know?

I use Experian. They have a free and pay version (they keep asking me to upgrade). They notify me via email immediately if there is any activity which is awesome.

https://www.usa.gov/credit-reports

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

"AnnualCreditReport.com is a website jointly operated by the three major U.S. credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The site was created in order to comply with their obligations under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) to provide a mechanism for American consumers to receive up to three free credit reports per year."

In other words, AnnualCreditReport.com is a privately owned site that exists because of federal law for consumer access to their credit reports.

Any other site that makes you pay to get it isn't really necessary but they don't tell you that. Previously, if you wanted to get more reports than 1 in a year, you had to pay a fee for them but like what was already said, reports are being offered weekly because of all of the fraud and data loss events occurring in the past 5 years.

That's good advice but, a credit check/score is different from a credit report.

Your Credit Check just shows you a number and potentially any recent types of actions that would have caused a swing, one way or the other, not the actual events that created the swing. Your banking institution cannot actually get your credit history, by law, without your express, written permission in either a statement letter or a credit inquiry form. For the bank to get your credit history and give you a report, they would have to do pretty much the same thing they do when you go to get approved for a loan or open an account. They cannot, legally, access your credit history without your permission unless they are in litigation with/against you and then they need a court issued subpoena to get it.

Credit Checks can be useful in determining what your potential eligibility would be to secure a loan and it can also give you a good idea of why things like insurance premiums and interest rates seem higher for you than your contemporaries.

If there are drastic changes in your credit rating but you have not had any major credit changes recently, that can be indicative of fraud but it will not identify the fraud.

A Credit Report is a detailed transaction log of every credit event that has been reported on you by various banks, lending institutions and creditors over a period of time. They will tell you who, what, when on every credit incursion on your report and they are, by law, required to give you actionable contact information for all of your creditors to resolve any potentially fraudulent items in your credit history.

Y'all can go ahead think I'm a know-it-all, blowhard again, I don't care. The simple fact here is that I do this kind of data security and regulatory compliance for a living, My job is to make sure my clients are in compliance with these laws and I help them implement and manage the tools that help them stay in compliance and protect the data that they have on you, their customers.