Credit Protection On The Cheap

With qualifying guidelines tightening for mortgages, it should be clear by now that safeguarding your credit rating is a top priority if you want to receive the best rates and terms.

Credit protection scams, er, plans abound, offering all manners of credit monitoring at prices as high as $15+ per month. I have no experience with these programs, but have always been a little suspect of their fear-mongering and pricing policies.

Here’s an alternate monitoring method for the more frugal among you:

By federal law, you are entitled to one free credit report each 12 months from each of the three credit reporting bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. However, rather than requesting and reviewing them all at the same time, space your requests to one report from just one bureau per quarter. If you alternate bureaus each time, then voila, you’ve got year-round monitoring for free.

Please note:

The OFFICIAL site for the FREE credit report is www.annualcreditreport.com. Don’t let other derivative URLs that include FREE, ANNUAL, CREDIT and REPORT fool you.

Be aware, that your credit score is NOT a part of your credit report, but it can be obtained for as little as $8 using www.annualcreditreport.com.

New protections are on the way for Oregonians.

In Oregon, a new ID Theft Protection Act (Senate Bill 583) law goes into effect October 1, 2007, whereby you can ‘freeze’ your credit information. This is a common practice in 37 other states, but new for Oregon.

Under a credit freeze, only a very limited group of organizations (existing creditors, property managers, and law enforcement officials to name a few) will have access to your credit report. So, in theory, bad guys won’t be able to get new credit cards or open store accounts using your stolen identity. Note, the freeze can take up to 5 days to go into effect after you request it.

And here’s the hitch: It’ll cost you $10* to set up the freeze with each credit bureau, and then $10 each time you want to temporarily unfreeze your credit to buy a new car, furniture, etc. with a new creditor. Considering that Oregon is the 13th worst state for identity theft, the peace of mind might just be worth the expense and inconvenience.

For more information on the ID Theft Protection Act, visit http://www.dfcs.oregon.gov/id_theft.html or call (503) 947-7492.

Technorati Tags: credit, report, score, identity, theft, FICO, protection, FTC, freeze, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, mortgage, underwriting, Oregon

* Unless you are a victim of identity theft or have reported the theft of your personal identifying information to a law enforcement agency. Check here for details.

Image by Lazy_Lightening. Used under Creative Commons license.

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Add comment October 1st, 2007