You have the right to receive a free annual credit report so don't get scammed into paying for it or subscribing to a service to access it. Under a new amendment to the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, Equifax, Experian, and Transunion, our national consumer reporting agencies, are required by law to provide each and every citizen of the United States of America a free annual credit report. You are required to provide each agency your date of birth, social security number, name, and address before you can obtain the free credit report.



There are many deceiving advertisements which entice you with a free credit report only to get you to sign up for a service or purchase a product you don't necessarily want or need in order to access your free credit report. Only one website online is the legitimate source for Your free annual credit report and that is annualcreditreport.com. Many services online have purchased misspelled domains hoping to redirect you to their site and attempt to charge you for something to gain access to your free credit report. So be careful not to misspell their address.

You may order your free annual credit report by mail by simply filling out the Free Annual Credit Report Request Form and mailing it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. If you prefer you can order your free credit report by calling toll free 877-322-8228. Do not contact the credit reporting agencies directly to attempt to get your free annual credit report. None of the agencies will provide you with a free credit report if you do.

For security reasons each nationwide consumer reporting agency will ask you for information that only you would know. A question they might ask might be the amount of your car payment or some other question pertaining to information in your file. Since the information in your file which each agency collects comes from different sources each may ask you a different question. You may be offered additional products or services while on the authorized free credit report website but you are not required to make a purchase to receive your free annual credit report.

You can get immediate access to your free credit report if you request it on the website. Although if you do not answer one of the security questions correctly the credit reporting agency will deny you access to your free annual credit report and mail the report instead. They do this to be sure that no unauthorized person can gain access to your file. If you did not order your free annual credit report online than than the consumer reporting agency will mail your report within 15 days of them receiving your request.

If you have already received your free credit reports and need another before the 12 month period is over you may still be able to get another free credit report. Under federal law, you're entitled to a free credit report if a company takes adverse action against you such as denying your application for credit and you ask for your report within 60 days of receiving notice. You are also entitled to a free credit report if you are the victim of identify theft and place a fraud alert in your file, your file contains inaccurate information as a result of fraud, you are on public assistance, or you are unemployed but expect to apply for employment within 60 days.

If none of the free options to get a free credit report are available to you than you will have to purchase a report for a small fee of around $10.00. You can contact the credit reporting agencies as follows: * Equifax: 800-685-1111; http://www.equifax.com * Experian: 888-EXPERIAN (888-397-3742); http://www.experian.com * TransUnion: 800-916-8800; http://www.transunion.com