Free Credit Report Online

If you’ve taken a look online, you’ve probably found a number of sites that offer to provide you with a free credit report. But is it really free? That’s not easy to answer. It’s quite possible that you won’t need to pay for the report with money, but you may find yourself paying in other ways once you’ve entered in all your personal information. Some companies will then use that information to pester you with spam, junk mail or even annoying phone calls. So in many ways, a free online credit report really isn’t free at all. Quite often you will need to sign up for an offer, which might include a trial membership to service that traces and looks for irregularities in your credit history. You may even have to sign for services that have nothing to do with getting a free online credit report.
In the end, you might actually be better trying to find a credit report online that’s cheap, although the free ones might still be worth it. After all, it’s important to keep your credit history clear, and it can be a good idea to check what’s listed on your history before you apply for a loan. Do you remember when you changed addresses and missed the last cable payment? That’s a black mark on your credit history. Running late with a credit card payment? That’s on there as well. All of these things damage your credit, and if there’s enough of these little slip ups on your credit record, you may find it difficult to get a loan from a regular lender. It’s also possible that there are things on there that have nothing to do with you, and have either been placed against your name by mistake or by someone committing fraud.
Identity theft is on the rise, and a criminal may have been using your personal information to buy cellular phones and order credit cards. Once they have your name and identity, they can rent a home in your name or apply for loans. Unless you regularly check your credit report, you might not even know that these things are happening until one day you’re refused credit and you don’t know why. It’s much harder to clean your credit history than it is to mess it up in the first place, so checking it regularly can be insurance against having a big mess to clean up down the track. Removing all the fraudulent entries can take as much as a year, and will cause you a lot of hard work and frustration. Getting regular credit reports can be costly, and that’s why it might be worth getting a free credit report online, even if you have to put up with a few junk letters afterwards.