Posts Tagged Credit Card Company

Free Triple Score Credit Report – Protecting Yourself From Identity Theft

Lee Cole asked:




Your free triple score credit report is very important because identity theft is huge and on the rise in America and elsewhere. What’s even worse about identity theft is it’s a crime that occurs without you even knowing it. You can learn that you’ve been a victim of identity theft years after the crimes has taken place.

Maybe you sold your house and applied for a new loan only to find out that some criminal has taken your creidt score and flushed it down the toilet. Or maybe you start getting bills in the mail for items you’ve never purchased. Either way, identity theft is a horrible experience to go through.

One of the ways you can protect yourself from identity theft is through your free triple score credit report. You are entitled to a free credit report from each of the credit reporting bureaus each year. That would be from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. When you download your credit report, you need to go through it carefully and look for anything unusual. If you find anything out of line, then you might need experienced help. There are reputable attorneys who specialize in this sort of problem.

When you find out you’ve been a victim of identity theft, it really takes the wind out of your sales. It’s degrading and humiliating. Not to mention the fact it makes you feel very vulnerable and powerless. There are, however, several steps you take take to protect yourself.

One thing you can do is to contact your bank or credit card company and see how much identity theft protect costs. Another thing you can do is to look into any of several companies, which guarantee your identity. This costs a fee, but the peace of mind can surely be worth it. Another thing you can do is to lock your credit report, or put a fraud alert on it.

One you lock your credit report, no one can make any purchases using your information without having to verify vital information. To make your identity even more secure, you should shred all sensitive information. Bank statements, credit card statements, anything that shows your social security number should all be shredded.

Another thing you can do is to be very careful about giving information out over the Internet, especially over a non-secure server. If you make any purchases online, make sure that this is over a https: connection not just an http: connection. Also, you want to make sure your information is encrypted.

A final thing you can do to protect your information an protect your free triple credit score report is to never, ever give out information over the phone to a company that you didn’t call. Make sure that you’re not being scammed by the person on the other end of the phone call.

Kelly

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How Does Applying For a Credit Card Hurt Me?

Manshu Verma asked:




How does applying for a credit card hurt my credit score?

Every time you apply for a credit card, the credit card company makes an inquiry into your credit report. These are also known as hard pulls. Each of these credit inquiries or hard pulls, take away around 5 points from your credit score.

The rationale behind taking away points from your credit score when you apply for credit, is that, it is harder to control multiple lines of credit when compared to just a few. It also shows a tendency that leans towards getting excessive credit and then getting into a spending spiral, which may become difficult for you to get out of and as a result your chances of default become high.

These inquiries show on your credit report for a period of one to two years, but the dent in score itself will be rectified in about a couple of months, if you do not abuse your newly available credit.

If your credit application gets approved, then your score will rise fairly quickly because the additional line of credit will give you a boost. Along with this, your ‘debt is to available credit’ ratio will also improve and that will help boost your score too.

Be aware of the credit application spiral

The people who are worse hit are the people whose credit application gets rejected. When their application gets rejected, their score goes down. However, since their application has been rejected, they apply again thereby reducing their score further and chances are that they will get rejected once again. This is a vicious circle and if you get into this kind of thing four or five times, then your credit score takes a bigger hit.

So be careful, and next time you are tempted to apply for that store credit card that will give you $10 off on a new shirt, think twice!

Jamie

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