Posted on Thu 08/04/05 in My So Called Blog
Our federal government’s Federal Trade Commission is allowing most of us to an annual credit report from the three major credit reporting companies, Equifax, “Experian”www.experian.com, and TransUnion.
In the past, we had to give our credit card number to a company for a free report or pay (usually $7 per report) for our reports.
At http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ you can order or view immediately your credit report from each of the agencies, free of charge and without giving a credit card number. This can be done annually. It became effective in Florida on June 1st, 2005.
I helped a co-worker print his out yesterday and it was painless. He discovered several errors spanning the three reports. One example of an error he found was having four or five accounts left open from almost 7 years ago. While it might be good to keep an account open to show the account was in good standing, too many accounts with high credit limits and zero balance can hurt your credit score. In addidtion, if accounts you thought were closed remain open, they are easier targets for identity thefy.
For more information on fraud, identity theft, and correcting errors on the credit reports, visit the links below:
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