Identity Theft- It could happen to you- Free Credit Report

With the economy teetering on the verge of a recession and people?s budgets and lifestyles being altered, having a high credit score isn?t quite as easy anymore. With the mortgage crisis still lingering and some financial institutions stepping up their requirements for borrowing money, it is becoming harder and harder to get ahead in this country. Little do people know or realize, your credit score is affected by so many factors and can change in no time at all.

Now is a great time to purchase a house. It may not be the best of times to be a seller, but if you can be a buyer right now ? there might be more room for bargaining. So many people start the process of house hunting without knowing where they stand in regards to their credit and end up getting turned down for loans without even knowing why they were rejected. It may not seem important to know your credit score or see your report, but it can help you in ways that you never imagined. One of the best things that you can do before starting a loan process is to find out how to obtain free credit reports.

Once you have done this and have the opportunity to look through your free credit report, you will know exactly what is on your report. By federal law, you are entitled to free credit reports once a year. Even if you are not seeking out a home loan at the moment, it is helpful to look at your report; in many cases, there is inaccurate information on credit reports. It may be easy to fix these errors in some cases, more complicated in others, but knowing what is on your report is the first step to ensuring that your credit is in good shape.

Thanks to a new amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you are entitled to obtain free credit reports every year from all three reporting companies. Equifax, TransUnion and Experian must provide a free copy to you once each year, if you request for them to do so. The Federal Trade Commission has warned the public against the numerous scams that have come about promising people the ability to obtain free credit reports. Most of them, indeed, end up being a scam and you end up giving some personal information out to others for either their own personal gain or a hidden fee or agenda.

You may suddenly find that some of these sites require you to join something or purchase another product in order to obtain free credit reports. You can, however, get a no-strings attached free credit report from the legitimate site ? www.annualcreditreport.com. This online source is where the government recommends that you search in order to get your free report in your hands. If you did pay or feel that you were scammed in trying to obtain free credit reports, you can report your experiences to the Federal Trade Commission. You may not be able to get a refund, but reporting a scam just may help someone else from becoming a victim as well.

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