AnnualCreditReport.com
- David Shaw

Credit today is more available than ever before, though the rates seen on that credit greatly depend on the credit history and, thus, credit score of a particular person. Understanding your credit score and knowing just what interest options are out is extremely important when it comes to financing projects big or small. AnnualCreditReport.com is one of the sites that can offer a credit report to share with you your credit score and related information, which can be a very valuable service.

First time home buyers in particular will see benefit in retrieving a credit report as it plays greatly into just what kind of financing options will be available. Those with poor credit scores may see credit counseling and debt relief as viable options to raise those scores, though help is hard to find without knowing just where your credit score lies on the national scale.

With all that being said, AnnaulCreditReport.com offers credit reports to anyone seeking them online. Federal law in the United States mandates that everyone is eligible to receive a free credit report each year from each of the three credit scoring companies in the United States without any kind of penalty. Those three currently authorized companies are Equifax, TransUnion and Experian.

AnnualCreditReport.com offers a gateway to all three companies, ensuring that visitors can retrieve a free credit report annually. What you see is the same thing a lending organization would see upon requesting your credit information for the purposes of issuing a loan. These credit scores are influenced by a wide variety of information, including any kind of debt such as credit card debt and signs of stability such as remaining in a good job for a long period of time.

One common fear with these types of sites is that simply asking for your credit score could adversely affect it. Simply requesting your personal report is classified as a “soft pull” and does not adversely affect your credit score. Credit counseling and debt counseling organizations also have the ability to retrieve a credit score without impacting that score.

The types of pulls that can affect a credit score, also known as a “hard pull,” are those done by lenders. A history filled with lender-driven credit report pulls could indicate someone that is frantic for a loan and has been unable to get approved in the past. To be clear, AnnualCreditReport.com does NOT do these kinds of pulls and requesting your information there will not harm your credit rating.

With that disclaimer out of the way, as a first step, these credit reports are open to anyone within the United States and its territories (Virgin Islands, American Samoa, etc.). Through the site’s secure connection, AnnualCreditReport.com requests personal information such as basic information like name and address to more sensitive information like social security number.

For those wary of identity theft when providing a social security number, know that the kind of encryption used on AnnualCreditReport.com is the same kind of encryption used on most Internet sites using sensitive data such as credit card numbers and personal identification information. Submitting information on AnnualCreditReport.com is, more or less, just as reliable as submitting it anywhere else online. For those still with identity theft reservations, AnnualCreditReport.com also offers the ability to request a credit report via phone.

After submitting your information, AnnualCreditReport.com offers you the ability to request credit information from any or all of the three companies supported by the site. For each company you choose, you will be transferred to that company’s individual site to confirm your information. Should you choose more than one company, you will repeat this process for each company, taking you separately to each company’s web site.

For Equifax’s process, the site asks you some clarifying questions in an effort to confirm that you are who you say you are. For me, that mean answering what kind of loans I’ve had in the past, the terms of the loan and who issued it. After confirming that you are actually who you say you are, Equifax asks if you would like to have a FICO score added to your report for a fee. Here is where I must make an important distinction amongst credit scores.

Each of the three companies licensed in the United States to pull credit histories has their own formula for computing a credit score, each with a unique name and set of deciding factors. Conversely, a FICO score is another method for deriving a credit score and that method has become more or less the industry standard in the banking and consumer finance industry. When lending agencies talk about credit scores, they often talk about a person’s FICO score.

If it is important to you to be able to use your FICO score number in further research into credit opportunities, you’ll probably want to add that option on to your report. If you really just want to see how your credit looks, the credit histories provided by the three individual companies will accomplish that goal for free. Providing FICO scores is not mandated as a right under federal law and instead represents a profit center for the three credit scoring companies that AnnualCreditReport.com provides access to.

All three sites are full of additional options that you can opt for to supplement the bare bones credit report they are required to offer under federal law. For Equifax, options ranged from a printout putting my credit score up against others in my region or demographic bracket to a comprehensive tracking system that can be used to track my FICO score over time. These additions are entirely optional and should be purchased only if you have a specific need for them. If you just want to see what your financial standing is like, the basic model will probably be fine for you and the additional services can be purchased at any time, enabling you to go back in and get the premium reports should the need arise.

One of the nice features offered by Equifax through AnnualCreditReports.com is the ability to access your credit information free online for 30 days after commissioning the initial report. By setting up a user login with Equifax, you are able to go back in and pull up your credit history. This can be important if you misplace a printed version of the report and need to retrieve it. Remember, you can only get one report per company per year and after you close your browser from the Equifax site, you cannot go back in and retrieve the report without setting up an account. Keep this in mind as you are retrieving your credit report from all of the available companies.

When the credit report does come up, it is chock full of information, much of it in terms and details that may not seem familiar. Equifax offers the ability to get definitions of any term used and with such a comprehensive credit scoring document that can come in quite handy with a slew of unfamiliar technical terms.

All uses of credit, including mortgages, student loans, other types of loans and credit cards appear on the report, including information on whether those accounts have been paid on time or not. Another nifty aspect of the report is the ability to see what entities have requested to see your credit history over the past year. That can be anything from a cell phone company to a utility and lets you see just who is accessing your information.

The report also gives a variety of information on how to protect against identity theft and what to do should you think that your identity has been compromised. You are also able to dispute anything within the file and information is given on the process available for that as well.

In Equifax’s model, you will not get an end number that you can use as a credit score for free. That is not the intent for these types of reports and the only thing free and guaranteed under law is access to a credit history so that you can see who is making claims against your credit. This is done to give you the ability to protest certain aspects of your credit report that might adversely affect your ability to receive credit. It’s a great service to keep up on your credit standing for any reasons and is certainly advisable periodically.

After finishing with a particular company, AnnualCreditReport.com keeps a bar on the top of the page that lets you go back to the main page at any time to request a report from a different company. Remember, you are able to access one free report each year from each company, so there is something to be said for trying out the process for each of the three companies. Each provides the same basic information but additional services and premium information differs between the three.

AnnualCreditReport.com offers a one-stop solution to searching out your credit history for whatever reason you need, be it bad credit home refinancing concerns, debt consolidation, credit card debt or a simple curiosity about your credit card score and standing. I would recommend periodically going through the process to help you understand just how your actions can affect your credit standing.