Easy Acces to Your Credit Reports on Line
A Credit Article Contributed by Mark Mcclelland
Is It Safe to Get Your Credit Reports on Line
Should you request a copy of your credit reports on line? Well, that depends on your personal level of paranoia. The fact is that as the Internet has matured over the past couple of decades, a lot of capabilities have been added and technologies developed that increase the safety and reliability of information and data transmitted through the web.
And there are quite a number of alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer available if stories concerning the security of the Microsoft products scare you. There are but a couple of things you need to pay attention to be able to safely request and obtain information and data, like your credit reports, on line:
1) Make sure you're communicating with a secure site. All browsers have a way of indicating whether or not you're communicating with a "secure" web site; for example, with Microsft's IE there's a small icon (picture) of a lock displayed in the lower portion of IE's screen - if it's "locked" you're communicating with a secure site, if it's "unlocked" you're not; the Netscape browser uses an icon of a key - like a door key - that's either broken (not secure) or solid (secure).
2) Make sure you're communicating with the correct site. If anything about the site looks strange, words are misspelled, grammar is screwy, or anything else, don't interact with that site. Honest companies that transact business on line, like getting credit reports or selling products or services, go to great pains to ensure that their sites are clean, correct, and usable, and without error. Fly-by-nite organizations that are likely to rip you off, or worse, steal your information and use it for identity theft purposes, are unlike to put forth the same level of effort.
Are on Line Credit Reports Accurate
Accurate, in this instance, can take on a couple of meanings: one meaning questions the reliability of extracting the data from the data sources and transmitting that data to you, and the other questions the correctness of the data, the other.
In the first case, it is fairly likely that what is transmitted to you on line is an accurate representation of the data contained in your credit files as maintained by the credit reporting agencies.
In the second case, however, it is fairly likely that your files, as maintained by those agencies, will contain data that is in error to one degree or another. There might be errors serious enough to cause a potential creditor to deny you credit... and you should see that these are corrected.
What about the on Line Offers for Consolidated Credit Reports
As mentioned above, there are a number of companies that offer to get copies of your credit reports for you and transmit then to you on line. These companies can be separated into two categories: those that provide three separate credit reports - one from each of the three credit reporting agencies, and those that provide a single "consolidated" report combining the data from each of the three agencies into one.
While the consolidated approach may seem like a better choice, if errors are found (and as said before, you're likely to find some) it may be easier to deal with each of the agencies separately. But the choice is up to you.
