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Generally people know that they have the right to get their free credit report online, but many people get fooled by sites claiming to give away free credit reports when in reality they are signing you up for expensive credit monitoring and protection services. If you're looking for a free credit report, make sure you get it from the one source that will give you a free credit report without trying to trick you into signing up for a credit monitoring or credit protection service.

When looking for a free credit report, many people hop onto Google or their other favorite search engine and type in the words "free credit report." It's only logical, right? If you were to perform that Google search, you would find that there are a number of different companies which make it appear that they will give you a free credit report online, and have websites that are equally deceptive.

Once you get to the part of their site where you sign up for a free credit report, it's written in fine-print that you're signing up for a free trial of a credit monitoring or credit protection service and can cancel and not pay a dime, or stay enrolled to pay a monthly fee for credit monitoring. Unfortunately most people don't realize what they're signing up for and a few months later charges from this company offering "free credit reports" shows up.

One of the companies that does this is FreeCreditReport.com. They'll give you a free credit report, but you have to sign up for an expensive membership fee first. If you were fooled by FreeCreditReport.com and signed up for their membership, you can cancel it by calling 1-877-482-6826.

The only site to get a free credit report online without any strings attached to speak of is at www.annualcreditreport.com. This is the site setup by Experian, Equifax, and Transunion to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting act which requires the major credit bureaus to make consumers' credit reports available to them once a year for no free to speak of. Any other company offering you a so-called free credit report will likely end up costing you money.

If you're looking to get a fico score, the only site to go to is www.myfico.com. This is the website of the Fair Isaac Corporation. They are the company that owns the proprietary formula which calculates your credit score. Any other credit score you will receive will not be the same score that lenders use when they determine if you are credit worthy, so make sure when you order a credit score, you are ordering a FICO score.

Learn more about this author, JQ Adams.
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