Ellen PhillipsQ: I know you’ve written about the importance of credit reports (which I’ve saved), but are there other resources available to help us spot identity theft?
– Carla Cautious
Dear Ms. Cautious: First, I’m delighted you’ve put aside the credit report information in the event you should need it for possible ID theft or simply to check and make certain all your personal and financial information is correct.
For those first-timers, I can’t emphasize this enough: go online to annualcreditreport.com (and no other website) or call 877-322-8228 for your free reports. You can obtain all three collectively once a year or spread them out and receive one every four months, which I advocate.
Annual reports are also available from other and less familiar sources. Used primarily by specific industries, such as healthcare, you can ask for these once a year – most for free. While I’ll mention only some of the most useful for the majority of consumers who are trying to prevent ID theft, AARP tells us to go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (cfpb.org) and search for “consumer reporting agencies” to find all 40 reports.