@Anonymous wrote:
The standard advice is:
1. Place a freeze and fraud alert on your three bureau files.
2. Request your annualcreditreport.com (it's free 1x/year) from each bureau, spacing them so that you get one each 4 months.
3. Monitor your statements carefully. If you only get paper statements this will be difficult. It's best to reconcile your online statements at least weekly with whatever budget mechanism you use (program/app/spreadsheet/napkin and crayon/whatever works).
This way you spend nothing ($0) out of pocket and receive the same protections, and you don't go overboard. This is the advice you hear from Consumer Reports, newspapers, etc.
Personally?
I like to request my annual credit reports from all 3b at the same time. I don't have the patience to space things out and in the course of life going on, I'll miss requesting a report. I just know that about myself.
I am going through bk and right now, I feel it is advantageous to have monthly scores and reports to get me through at least the first little while so I can see my progress in rebuilding.
I use creditreport.com which is through Experian and offers monthly reports and FICO scores with the various models. (Instant EX scores/reports, monthly updates on EQ and TU) I don't even need auto or mortgage scores but iirc it offers them. It has a simulator, for whatever little it's worth. It's $20/mo. Again, I've worked it into my budget with the knowledge it is temporary. (I did attempt to sign up for Discover's free creditscorecard multiple times on multiple devices and browsers and receive a generic error every time, and have no means of support for non-members... so I have no means of accessing their service :shrug: ) A lot of people do the creditchecktotal.com $1 trials and immediately cancel but again, I do not have the time or patience for this at least right now. I have enough to juggle
I don't particularly think credit monitoring is actually the thing to do if you are concerned about ID theft. You have free tools available to you: freeze your reports and place fraud alerts. Sign up for creditkarma and get your EQ and TU reports for free that way (ignore the scores which are Vantage not FICO). Do the $1 cct thing once a month, or quarterly, which isn't technically free but pretty dang close. I'm sure other people have other ideas and if you read around here long enough, you'll start to get a fuller picture.
Best of luck.
Not to be argumentative here...but IMHO, monitoring has it's advantage. The only thing about the standard advice is I'm not sure it covers everything.
What if someone gets a driver license with a different name but use your ssn?
What about obtaining medical service under your ssn/name, or applying for a passport, etc.? Will montoring my banking and credit card statements or even getting updated credit reports catch this type of identify theft? A freeze keeps someone from opening new accounts, but how does it help if someone just wants your identity (not your credit)?
If someone obtain medical service under your id info, you wouldn't know until it goes in collection and shows up on your credit report - and that could be a couple of years, depending on the collection effforts and reporting rules for that medical facility. You will certainly know if someone added a different name to your credit report - but depending on when you pull your credit reports, it could be up to a year before you would know anything of the sort happened and who knows what kind of damaged would have been done by then.
As for scores credit.com , CreditKarma lots of good sites out there completely free as for myFICO 3B I've had the service it's good too hope this helps.