Totally Free Credit Reports Can Help Protect Your Credit

Getting your totally free credit reports is not only easy to obtain, but it is also very necessary in today's world. Our personal information is out there more than ever. We use credit and debit cards with all of our valuable and personal information contained in that little back strip on the back; and we make purchases and provide all kinds of personal information on the internet. Today’s criminals are smarter than ever and very technically advanced. They know now to use computers to their advantage to gain your personal information and use it to benefit them.

When someone steels your personal information and uses it for themselves you might not even know they have done so. It is not as obvious as someone steeling your car – a tangible product; your personal information is not tangible and therefore not as easy to detect.

However there are a number of things that you can do in order to protect yourself and to catch a fraudulent use of your information before it gets out of hand.

1. Always protect your ID – driver’s license, credit and bank cards, care cards, SIN or SSN. Make sure you know where they are at all times. If they get lost or stolen, report them missing immediately.

2. Protect your PIN (personal identification number) for your bank cards. Take notice of the people around you when using a bank machine. Make sure you do not expose your PIN to someone peering over your shoulder. And if for any reason your feel uncomfortable in your surroundings, go to a different location to withdraw your funds.

3. For added protection on your credit cards, do not sign the back of them, instead write “see photo ID”. This way you will have to produce picture ID to verify not only your signature but also the person.

4. Always take your credit card receipts and debit card receipts home with you and shred them. This is an important one, as I was always under the impression that the computer printed receipt only held the last for numbers of your credit card, however, I have found ones that contained the whole number printed right there along with my signature!

5. Check your statement. Review your bank and credit card statements carefully. Make sure you are not just scanning the statements, look at every transaction, you might not notice a few smaller transactions being processed, not all fraud transactions will be huge so they are easy to notice, they might make smaller purchases that are not as easy to detect and do them on a regular basis. Make sure all transactions make are yours and report anything out of the ordinary immediately.

6. The Internet can be a very safe place to make a purchase or a very dangerous one. If you are making a purchase on the net, you will want to keep your eyes on the look out for a few keys things. You will want a reputable or legitimate website, so look for a contact us section. Do they have contact information, phone number, address, email, customer service department? Next make sure it is a secure site, this is usually marked at the bottom of the page or near the shopping cart or buy buttons. Check their return policy, and other policies such as price guarantee, privacy, etc. Are they a member of the Better Business Bureau? If they are they will also have the logo posted showing they are members.

7. Check your credit report a minimum of once per year. And even better is signing up for a monthly credit monitoring service which provides you with a totally free credit report online. There are different services out there that provide you with a new credit bureau report, monthly, quarterly or yearly. In addition you can also get fraud and ID protection, where they will report to you any changes on your credit bureau. As with your bank statements, you will want to make sure and closely check your report – go through the inquiries make sure you did in fact apply for credit to each inquiry, as this could be an early warning sign that someone has applied for credit falsely under your name. Make sure your personal information is correct, such as your address. Sometime a criminal may change your address when applying for credit, so the new credit card and statements go to them instead of notifying you. Check all your debts listed; make sure they are yours and all information if reporting correctly. Immediately notify each of the three major credit reporting agencies of any discrepancies and have them corrected.

8. Be caution and use common sense when signing up for newsletters and accounts on the internet. Use the same precautions as you do when making a purchase. A newsletter or account should not be looking for to much information and would not be looking for your credit card information or social security number.

The future is the Internet, so do not be afraid of it, just use it wisely. By taking the above precautions, and doing them on a regular basis you will avoid the unwanted – fraud and identity theft – and giving you confidence in all your credit transactions.

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