Get credit report online

How do I … obtain an online copy of my credit report?

?

U.S. law allows everyone one free credit report every 12 months.

The best place to start is AnnualCreditReport (annualcreditreport.com) and go through the sign-up process there.

It allows you to choose a report from the three official reporting firms, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. All three do the same thing. To sign up you’ll have to verify your identity by providing a few answers (like your mortgage payment or current employer name).

You can go through the process and either pay for the full official FICO score, or just ignore that and get your credit report. Without paying the fee for the “score,” you’ll get all relevant creditor summaries and some other things.

That is good enough to determine any possible identity theft of erroneous credit history.

You can get your FICO score by paying $15 at myfico.com. Better than that, at bankrate.com/brm/fico/calc.asp, you can answer a few questions and get a rough-guess estimate of your FICO number for free.