Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

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Some steps to monitor your credit (USA):

1. Signup for https://www.creditkarma.com. Yes, you can argue about giving your credentials to a 3rd party company and they show you ads but credit karma sends me real time activity on my credit report FOR FREE. I get offers etc but I am happy since I can keep an eye on my credit report from all agencies. (except Experian who want you to pay them for report).

2. Get a free credit report once a year from https://https://www.annualcreditreport.com

3. Get your FICO score from discover [0] for free OR Open a credit card with Citi cards [1] and I think for $95/Year fee, they give you free FICO score which is the score that majority of lenders use. There are many other companies that offer FICO score for a fee but this was a good way for me since I needed that type of card anyway.

[0] https://www.discover.com/free-credit-score/

[1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/FICO-Score

4. Check your credit card and bank statements every few days. I do it once a week. It is a good habit. For this step, do it manually. Don't rely on mint or tools like that. Check the transactions manually.

5. Setup alerts with your bank/credit card for transactions with a certain threshold. For example, I have alerts for anything over $10. For under $10, see Step 4. This is another step in case you do have a fraud.

5. Don't give out your SSN or credit information to anyone unless absolutely sure. Never give these on a phone call with any company unless you know that you called that company and they need the info (example: health insurance etc).

6. If you ever get a call from a Collection Agency, do not give them your information right away. Lot of collection calls are plain fraud or incorrect. Ask them to send a letter with details (genuine ones will do anyway). Read this from FTC about debt collection to educate yourself

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection

These steps will keep you safe for the most part.

Fun fact about credit reports: See this video by John Oliver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k

All this to just keep your record clean and not have your bank misplace your money?

These are things you should not have to worry about in life.

They are expected and in most modern countries are not something you need to worry about.

When I tell my friends about this in the US at first they don't believe me. The can't believe that the banks make so many mistakes (such as credit/debit the wrong person for a check) and that there is this thing called a credit score which you have very little control over and can ruin you without you doing anything wrong.

The amount of time I have wasted in fixing credit scores and dealing with overdraft fees because someone else's check was pulled on the wrong account is staggering.

should isn't a useful word when you're deciding what to actually do. If you want to change the status quo, start working to change it. But in the meantime you have to pay attention and look after your properties.

Unfortunately, yes you need to do all these otherwise there is a risk that you have something on your credit report and you will never know. I hate the system too but right now, this is what it is.

I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that the US is the only "modern" (however you define that) country on Earth that has credit scores.

In California at least you can "security freeze" your credit reports so no one can apply for credit in your name. You have to temporarily "unfreeze" them (with a pin code) for someone to get a report. I was a victim of identity theft many years ago (from an employee in my company no less), and while I didn't loose any money, it was a huge hassle to straighten it out. If you don't regularly need services that require a credit report freezing them is much simpler than monitoring the credit agency. I did this many years ago and it really is a lot simpler solution in my opinion than constant monitoring.

Incidentally when I was an identity theft victim they didn't remove the incorrect information, they just said the fraudulent credit cards were "never late" and thus would not affect my score. I thought that was lame.

https://oag.ca.gov/idtheft/facts/freeze-your-credit

> 3. Get your FICO score from discover [0] for free OR Open a credit card with Citi cards [1] and I think for $95/Year fee, they give you free FICO score which is the score that majority of lenders use. There are many other companies that offer FICO score for a fee but this was a good way for me since I needed that type of card anyway.

As well as Discover, Barclays and USAA credit cards both offer (one of) your credit scores without paying an annual fee.

American Express too.

However the bigger issue is checking the whole credit report not just the score.

I have calendar reminders set four months apart to get and review credit reports, going round-robin through credit agencies. This gets me a (free) credit report 3 times a year.

I have a Citi Doublecash with no annual fee and they provide a credit score. Been with them for many years though so your eligibility may vary.

Minor correction -- there's no fee to check your credit score with Citi cards.

#2 doesn't work. That site is super buggy and the Experian connection hasn't worked for 4+ years.

I have also never had much luck with the annual report site.

Last time I tried I couldn't get past the question with the list, "Which of these phone numbers have you had in the past? (check all that apply)"

I've had a lot of numbers in the past because my daughter's phone was in my name, or I changed carriers and my number wouldn't transfer.

Yes. I too "failed" the public information database of my history. :-/

I've never had any issues with it myself.

Well, just went to pull my Experian report. It works, but it's certainly less than optimal.

TransUnion and Equifax give you PDFs of your report that you can easily download. Experian just shows you an HTML document. There's a "printer friendly" version, but the only thing that's really different is they removed the navigation and the "Dispute" buttons that are listed next to every item.

On top of that, there's a position:fixed header on the print friendly document, which most browsers will render once on every page. In this case, that causes information at the top of each page of the report to be covered up. I was able to use Chrome's DOM inspector to set it to position:static and then Print > Save as PDF, but it really shouldn't be that hard.

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