How do you get a free annual credit report?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Are the ones offered online legit? They do ask for your social security number which makes me leery.</p>

2

<p>yeah the ones online are real. go here </p>

<p><a href=“Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page”>Annual Credit Report.com - Home Page;

<p>they need your social security number to pull your credit…</p>

3

<p>For more information, check here: <a href=“Clark.com - Clark Howard”>Clark.com - Clark Howard;

4

<p>If giving your SSN online troubles you, you can also print off a form and mail it in to receive your free credit report.</p>

<p>Of course, whether that option sounds good depends on how much more you trust the security of the mail, as you need to provide your SSN on the printed form also.</p>

5

<p>Having just done this, yes, annualcreditreport.com is genuine. However, you don’t get your credit SCORE, just all the information on the credit report. I wanted to check that stuff had been updated correctly, so that was fine, but you might want to get the score as well, in which case you will probably end up paying for it.</p>

<p>As a comment, most of the time if you don’t type in your SSN (or credit card #) yourself but call someone or send it over the mail (becuase you think it’s more secure that way), that person types in your SNN to the same web site, then tosses the paper in the trash, which may or may not be shredded before it’s recycled. I’d rather type it in myself, since I know that credit card companies and anyone asking for your SSN has a secure system (check for that LOCK symbol at the bottom of the page and watch out for phishing).</p>

<p>As far as phishing goes, never click on a link someone else has supplied and then type in your SSN or credit card info. For example, even though I know I’m honest, you don’t, and I could easily supply a link to a spoof site that would steal your SSN even as it looked genuine.</p>

6

<p>Thank you. I did not realize that it did not give you a score; I suppose it makes sense that you’d have to pay for that.</p>

7

<p>Why do you have to pay to get your score??</p>

8

<p>Ridiculous, isn’t it, that you have to PAY for information that is ABOUT YOU that credit reporting agencies calculate via their proprietary algorithm. </p>

<p>On top of that, the FICO score you pay for still isn’t really your real score - it’s rather a commercialized approximation.</p>