topic My review of the FICO® 3-BUREAU CREDIT MONITORING product. in myFICO® Product Feedback

My review of the FICO® 3-BUREAU CREDIT MONITORING product.

ERoosky99 — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 10:15:57 GMT

I ordered this product on August 29, 2014, so I have had the service approximately two months. There are certainly features that I appreciate, but overall I find the product/service to be less than impressive. To pay $60 for a service that often reports SLOWER than a free service such as CreditKarma (CK) is pretty absurd. Granted, CK does not offer a FICO score it does WEEKLY provide a new TransUnion credit profile for FREE which this service doesn't even provide. I cannot see myself continuing to pay for this service if the kinks are not worked out soon. I understand that MyFICO is a third-party vendor, but IMHO the service needs some serious improvements.

Re: My review of the FICO® 3-BUREAU CREDIT MONITORING product.

axxy — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 18:14:39 GMT

I applied for an Amazon (Chase) credit card Oct 16. The inquiry appeared on TU and EX, both dated Oct 16. As of Oct 26, there is no inquiry on Eq, according to Score Watch. So if you relied on Score Watch for Eq only, you might miss that inquiry. That's why it's a good idea to have all three credit reporting agencies covered and/or to have all those free services. ProtectMyID is a free service that gives alerts for Experian. Most of the other free services give scores for TU and/or alerts for TU. Some of the services, probably including ProtectMyID, are provided when someone has a "data breach". In other words, you get a new offer every hour, if that's how often someone has a data breach. You have to watch out, because credit hackers keep getting more and more active, so your email inbox is likely to overflow with free offers sometime in the future. Besides data breaches, a lot of free services are now provided by credit cards. Discover, Penfed, Capital One, are examples of credit cards that provide free services, mostly free scores. But it's important to have alerts, not just scores. Inquiries are the first signs of ID theft, and scores don't always change when there is an inquiry.

By the way, data breaches are caused by incompetent software development, not by credit hackers. Credit hackers are like kids sneaking into a bank and walking out with the money, because the bank left the safe open and the front door unlocked. Competent software development by stores and credit card companies would make credit hacking impossible. So the number of free credit monitoring services you get depends on the amount of incompetence in software development. Prepare to have your inbox overflowing with data breach notices and free monitoring offers, because the vast majority of all software development is incompetent. But you should accept all the free ones, because they provide verification of each other's accuracy.

Re: My review of the FICO® 3-BUREAU CREDIT MONITORING product.

ERoosky99 — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 16:26:23 GMT

@axxy wrote:
I applied for an Amazon (Chase) credit card Oct 16. The inquiry appeared on TU and EX, both dated Oct 16. As of Oct 26, there is no inquiry on Eq, according to Score Watch. So if you relied on Score Watch for Eq only, you might miss that inquiry. That's why it's a good idea to have all three credit reporting agencies covered and/or to have all those free services. ProtectMyID is a free service that gives alerts for Experian. Most of the other free services give scores for TU and/or alerts for TU. Some of the services, probably including ProtectMyID, are provided when someone has a "data breach". In other words, you get a new offer every hour, if that's how often someone has a data breach. You have to watch out, because credit hackers keep getting more and more active, so your email inbox is likely to overflow with free offers sometime in the future. Besides data breaches, a lot of free services are now provided by credit cards. Discover, Penfed, Capital One, are examples of credit cards that provide free services, mostly free scores. But it's important to have alerts, not just scores. Inquiries are the first signs of ID theft, and scores don't always change when there is an inquiry.

By the way, data breaches are caused by incompetent software development, not by credit hackers. Credit hackers are like kids sneaking into a bank and walking out with the money, because the bank left the safe open and the front door unlocked. Competent software development by stores and credit card companies would make credit hacking impossible. So the number of free credit monitoring services you get depends on the amount of incompetence in software development. Prepare to have your inbox overflowing with data breach notices and free monitoring offers, because the vast majority of all software development is incompetent. But you should accept all the free ones, because they provide verification of each other's accuracy.

I'm not exactly sure how this relates to my post about the FICO® 3-BUREAU CREDIT MONITORING product. You did mention ProtectMyID a few times . . . Does this service offer FICO scores which is what I am trying to track/monitor closely? Thanks for your response.