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The Importance of Monitoring Your Credit Report

You should get a copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit agencies at least once a year. It doesn't matter if your credit rating is good or bad. Doing this will give you plenty of time to challenge mistakes in the report before they take hold. In addition, it will give you a heads up to major potential problems such as identity theft, early enough for you to do prevent the theft from totally ruining your life.

Whenever you ask for a credit report from one of the major credit reporting companies, there are certain things that they have to provide to you and some things that they don't.

By law, one of the key things that these companies are required to give you is a record of all credit inquiries that have been made about you in the last six months. This helps you to keep tabs on who is requesting personal financial information about you.

But that's not all. They also have to provide you with the names of all the individuals and businesses to which they have sold a copy of your credit report. If the report was requested for reasons related to a job search, they must provide you with the names of anyone who requested it in the past two years. And, if the reports was requested for any other reason, they are only required to provide the names of those requesting it within a one year period.

Even though most consumers who order a copy of their credit report don't pay attention to who has purchased or asked to look at copy of their credit report, this is something that you really do need to know. You should be very suspicious of any unfamiliar names requesting your personal financial information.

Just about everybody who asks for a copy of their credit report wants to know what their credit score is. Regrettably, the agencies are not required to provide you with your credit score or your credit risk rating.

You may think that this information belongs to you but, in reality, these figures are their internal evaluation as to your credit worthiness. In addition, it is the primary way in which they make their money. They sell this information to lenders and creditors, who use it as a basis in determining how big of a credit risk you are.

Now, even though they are not required to do so by law, some of these credit agencies will provide you with your credit score information for free. Others will do it for a fee. And some will not provide it to you at all. The key point is that whether they release it to you or not, is entirely up to their discretion.

The average person would probably be amazed at how many incorrect entries there are on their credit report. This makes it all the more important that you monitor your report and keep it accurate.

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