How to Get Your Credit Report Online for Free

Credit reports are increasingly becoming quite a need of the hour. As per the directives of federal law all the consumers must receive a free copy of their own credit report every year from each one of the credit reporting agencies. You can get free credit report online from all of the three major credit reporting agencies.  These agencies are TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.  Not all of us are aware that we can get a free copy of our credit report from any of these agencies every year. It is imperative to keep checking your credit report each year. With the advancement of technology there is a rise in frauds and thefts too. These days we hear a lot about identity thefts and when we get our credit report from all these agencies we can tally the items with our own list of transactions and check if the credit report states a correct statement. And this statement items belong to you rather than someone else. You can ask all of these companies to send over your credit report to you by email or snail mail but the easiest and fastest way to get hold of your credit report is to get it online. An online credit report, will show you all the related information about your credit standings and you can check it for all its worth.

You can go to the website of these credit rating agencies and seek your annual credit report. This website is created by the major credit reporting agencies, this is the free service given by these agencies for the customers as per the federal laws. Seeking the report is pretty simple, all you have to do is to go to the website and click on annual credit report, select your state from the drop down menu and click the ‘Request Report’ button. This service for the customers is mandatory for the credit reporting agencies by order of the federal laws. To seek the credit online report, you need to punch in some of your personal information; all the fields that are marked with an asterisk are required to be filled. General information such as your name, current address and previous address, birth, social security number etc. You need to also select the kind of report you would require, verify yourself to view your online credit score report.   You will be able to check all the three credit reporting companies simultaneously or you can also check a different one each quarter. You are entitled to one credit report from one of the credit rating agencies out of the top three each year. Hence you can have them at any time of the year you wish to. Ideally spreading them out over the entire year will give you a good view of the changes that happen in your credit report over the twelve months.

Identity theft is one of the biggest worries faced by Americans today!  Hence it becomes absolutely necessary to keep a close watch on ones credit report from time to time. But an alarming fact is that more and more companies claim that they offer a free of cost credit report that an ordinary consumer finds it difficult to choose the right company to attain his credit report without much hassle. This is when the federal trade commission, a federal agency that protects the consumers rights comes into play. The federal trade commission offers you 3 bureau online credit report for free. But while you are online looking for your credit report for free you need to be cautious, there would be advertisements luring you to go to various different websites and attain your credit report from there for free, do not get too tempted as you will find yourself diverted from your path and ending up signing up for some other service provided by the companies which are not for free.

Most of the times the unsuspecting customer is lured into buying other products and services of the financial companies that they sell along with the credit report. If you need these extra products and services then it is really good! But sometimes one is tricked into buying these products even when he is not quite willing.  Basically, you must see that you are not forced to buy something that you do not require. Ideally you should go to the FTC website and seek the “annual credit report”, do not type search phrases like ‘free credit score’ or ‘free credit history’ because these would land you at a website which will try to sell you products and services rather than getting you the free credit report you are trying to acquire. These are scams which these websites use to increase traffic towards their own website.  If you keep enough caution you will be able land at the right website and get your online credit report for free without much worry.