Online Credit Report

If you are ever asked if you would like to procure your online credit report, especially through an unsolicited email sent to you or through a letter in the mail then you should just delete it. This is because most offers for an online credit report are scams. 

None of the three credit report bureaus sends you an online credit report. They send it to you by snail mail. Furthermore you do not need someone to compile this information for you nor do you need to pay someone for getting this information for you. You can simply request it for free by writing or phoning the credit bureau that you want to get the credit report from. 

Yet another reason why you should avoid getting an online credit report is that often it is not really a credit report but more like a credit summary. These summaries do not allow you to see the same information that your creditors see when they order up your report so the information in them can be very misleading. 

Also if anyone besides you orders your credit report, this creates something called a “hard inquiry.” This hard inquiry reflects on your credit report as a negative comment that lowers your credit rating. This is why procuring an online credit report can actually damage the very entity you may be trying to correct and fix.  

Unfortunately the online credit report business is also riddled with crime. Some outfits will take a fee from you for procuring your online credit report and then disappear and refuse to deal with you again. The end result is that you are out money and never get to see the promised credit report either. 

Another risk is that an online credit report business is actually an identity theft ring. In this scenario the bogus company obtains your financial information, including your social security and bank account numbers and then uses that to commit various identity theft type crimes against you.

More About Identity Theft

How to Repair your Credit History