Your credit report is an important document that can affect not only your ability to get a loan, but even your ability to get a job, an apartment or insurance.  Indications of identity theft often first turn up on your credit report where you can find out if someone has used your name to commit financial crimes which is why it is very important to regularly monitor your credit report.  Federal law has long provided for you to be able to get a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies annually.  This is an important thing for everyone to do to make sure their credit report is accurate and that you have not become a victim of identity theft which is often first noticed on your credit report.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion agreed to provide weekly free credit reports to everyone through April of 2021.  This deadline for free weekly credit reports was extended twice temporarily and now the three credit reporting bureaus have made the right to get a free credit report weekly permanent.

Scammers use the free credit report law to scam you in two ways.  “Legitimate” companies may offer you a free credit report, but if you read the fine print, you will learn that you also have signed up for services that you may not wish to have that the companies charge you for each month.  True scammers will set up realistic looking websites that appear to offer a free credit report, but when you input the necessary information to obtain your free credit report, such as your Social Security number, you actually are providing it to an identity thief who uses the information to steal your identity.

TIP

Criminals often flunked grammar so one thing to look for to determine if you are on the legitimate website to obtain your free credit report is to look for misspellings and grammatical errors that scammers often make.  Although the domain names for websites offering what appear to be free credit reports appear to be legitimate, the actual official free credit report website address where you can now get your free weekly credit reports is https://www.annualcreditreport.com/requestReport/landingPage.action

I urge you to get your free credit reports and review them regularly.

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