How to Secure Your Own Credit Report Without Charge

The Fair Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA, was updated in 2003 to allow consumers one free credit report every 12 months from each of the three credit reporting agencies--Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Consumers may request their free annual reports online or over the phone. The federal government is contracted with annualcreditreport.com, which distributes the free annual reports to consumers. Consumers can retrieve their free reports by simply answering a few questions, and can choose to view their reports online or to receive them by mail.

Instructions

1

Go to annualcreditreport.com. Other sites may claim to offer free reports, but may mislead you into signing up for a credit monitoring service that costs you money each month after a free trial expires. To assure that you are receiving your no-strings-attached free report, obtain it only from annualcreditreport.com.

2

Choose which credit reporting agency form which you want to receive your credit report. You will be eligible to receive free reports from all three agencies so long as you haven't retrieved a free report in the past 12 months, but each must be accessed separately.

3

Enter the required information to request your free credit report.

Information will include your name, current and prior addresses, phone number, Social Security number and date of birth.

You will then be directed to another screen where you will be required to answer personal identifying questions regarding your financial history or prior addresses. Examples of common questions might include answering what bank your mortgage is financed through, how much your student loan payments are, or what county you used to live in. These questions help the agency to verify your identity so that they may protect the sensitive information that is contained in your credit report.

4

Choose whether you want to view your credit report online or if you'd like to receive in by mail.

If you choose to receive your report online, it will be available immediately and will be able to be printed out if you'd like a hard copy. You will be given the option to display only the last four digits of your Social Security number on the report for security reasons, if you prefer.

If you choose to receive your report by mail, it should arrive within 7 to 10 business days in most cases.

5

Repeat the above steps to obtain reports from the other credit reporting agencies.

If you've already received your free report in the last 12 months, you may have to pay for a copy of your report if you request it again before a new 12-month period expires.