Free Annual Credit Reports - Tips

• The ONLY authorized source for the free annual credit report is AnnualCreditReport.com. The Fair Credit Reporting Act actually guarantees you access to your credit report for free from each of the three nationwide credit reporting companies — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — every 12 calender months.
• You can request your free report online, by phone or by mail. Visit AnnualCreditReport.com, call 1-877-322-8228, or fill out the Annual Credit Report Request form and mail it to Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.  No matter how you request your report, you have the option to request all three reports at once or to order one report at a time.  By requesting the reports separately, you can monitor your credit more frequently throughout the year.
• After looking over your free credit report if you see accounts you don’t recognize or information that is inaccurate, contact the credit reporting agency and the information provider.
• If an investigation doesn’t resolve your dispute with the consumer reporting company, you can ask that a statement of the dispute be included in your file and in future reports. You also can ask the consumer reporting company to provide your state­ment to anyone who received a copy of your report in the recent past. You can expect to pay a fee for this service.
• If you suspect identity theft, you may need to place a fraud alert on your credit report, close compromised accounts, file a complaint with the FTC, or file a police report.
• Be wary of impostor websites that claim to offer “free credit reports,” “free credit scores,” or “free credit monitoring” because they are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program.
• It's a good idea to order a report from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies so as to have a complete picture of what is contained in those reports. It's possible that the information in the three reports is different though not necessarily inaccurate.
• It's also advisable to stagger your requests throughout the year so as to keep an eye on the accuracy and completeness of the information in your reports.