But my solution to that is to freeze my credit reports, also something theyâre required to do for free in the US, IIRC.
In general, criminals shouldnât be able to open new accounts in my name, since that would require a credit check that canât be performed while my reports are frozen.
If I have an impending need for something that requires a credit check, I can temporarily unfreeze the credit reports. Mildly inconvenient, but way less so than cleaning up after an identity theft mess.
yes i have my credit profile frozen on all 3 services.. recommend efveryone do it.. no getting loans or opening accts till u unfreeze it..
i was using lifelock but their billing is fubar and every renew they try to gouge you aka sirius and you have to call up and bitch to get a reduced rate.. and last time they screwed up and billed my twice \ and when i tried to fix it just cancelled me even though i had one payment through.. i disputed it with cc and switched to aurora.. highly recommended.
Just occurred to me that I was conflating free credit scores with free credit reports when I typed up that reply.
They are, of course, different.
Because thereâs no legal requirement to provide consumers with their credit scores for free, any of the offers we see for âfreeâ credit scores are presumably marketing tricks attempting to convince people to pay for other credit-related services, or possibly resell consumer data.
Credit Karmaâs not offering those credit scores purely as a public service.
Oh no they try to sell all sorts of stuff including other credit cards. The cards they offer you are just the ones I assume they get paid to offer, not necessarily the best options.
Just like the credit cards with perks expect to recoup everything via interest. I will let other people pay for my perks, they don't get a dime of my money.
Yeah I pay sometimes twice a month to clear my card. So it's like one month im doing great but then they check and I'm carrying a large balance but I pay it off in 2 weeks and they still ding me
If you really want to drive the score up a little you can pre-pay most of your balance before the statement drops to bring down your usage percent. It is a good idea to let a small balance roll to the statement though so that your credit history shows you are using the card. I was doing this at one point when trying to buy a house, but now I can just let it all roll to the statement and it doesn't make enough of a difference to matter to me.
Another major issue I have with credit scores is if you pay off loans and mortgages your credit score goes down! This is because your credit to debt ratio changes. Its like a slap in the face for getting out of debt.
