How to Check Your Credit Report Online

The federal law requires all consumers to receive a free copy of their credit report every twelve months from each of the three national consumer credit reporting agencies. These three credit reporting agencies are: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. It is a very good idea to check your credit report for a lot of reasons. Identity theft is on the rise and you want to make sure all of the items listed on the credit report are correct (and yours). Even if you are not thinking of buying anything or need your credit report for any specific reason, you should take advantage of the free annual offer and check your credit report. You can request these reports by phone or mail, but the easiest and fastest way to check your credit report is to check it online. Once you have all of the needed information, you can instantly see your report online. The following steps will show you how to check your credit report online.

Instructions

1

Go to the online site for your free annual credit report. See Resources below for a direct link to Annual Credit Report, which is the website created by the three credit reporting companies to provide this free service to the consumers per federal laws. Select your state from the drop down arrow and then click on the Request Report button.

2

Fill in your personal information. You will have to fill in all of the fields marked with a red *. This includes your name, birthday, social security number, current address and possibly a previous address too. Once you have supplied all of the details required, type in the characters shown in the box at the bottom left of the page and click on the Continue button.

3

Pick the credit reports you would like to get. The page that opens allows you to select from one to all three of the credit reporting agencies. Place a check in the box next to the one(s) you want then click on the Next button. You will have to select the Next button again to go directly to the agencies site.

4

Verify who you are and view your credit report online. You will be asked to enter the last four numbers in your social security number and then click on the Submit button. Click on the Annual Credit Report button and then on the Submit button again. You will then have to answer several identity questions to verify who you are and then click on the Continue button to view your free report. The above steps outline the Experian agency, but the others are similar.