Ok so I’ve ran Banklady for years and have not once been satisfied with a credit reporting scheme that you find online. It’s true you can normally get all of these stats free anyway just for asking and nowadays it’s on your credit card statements. Years ago when I first started Banklady you had to pay for some of these services (well at least that’s how they presented it until we dig further). There’s one service that I’ve been impressed with lately and I admit I’ve never paid them anything.
The site is Credit Karma. They make their money I would assume from trying to push credit card offers down your throat. They get paid hefty commissions for this. If you look past the circus of ads you can find some good data.
One of my favorite things is being able to determine the factors keeping my score down such as too many hard inquiries and too if I missed any payments that were reported. This has helped wake me up to some of the things I didn’t worry about. I mean come on not even Suze Orman is perfect.
Another amazing thing I recently discovered on the site was being able to look up what passwords have been breached. I actually had no idea they provided this service for free until a friend was telling me he was alerted about actual passwords that has been breached. I was in shock when he started listing all of the companies specifically that has also had his passwords caught up in data breaches.
I then signed into Credit Karma and discovered after scrolling through the pull down menus that this was possible. It’s not exactly easy to find but it’s there. I was then able to see what companies let me down in terms of leaking my information or being hacked. Either way they have no excuse not to have better security. I’ve been around on the internet since Al Gore invented it so I have tons of passwords out there but most of them are on sites I could care less about. The finding is that you really cannot trust any site with the same password.
I’ve battled hackers left and right like a war zone on this site. It’s went down so many times I cannot count and I bet some of the breaches that are not listed are the actual hosting companies I’ve used. The downside to Credit Karmas system is it will not tell you some of the sites involved but will tell you part of some passwords so you kind of get a hint.
I’ve always thought paid credit monitoring is overrated in some ways but this site is a great one to use for it’s free services.
I’ve been the victim of stolen credit cards numbers that I’ve had in my wallet, stolen cards, lost cards, and several hacked accounts. I can assure you if someone wants to hack into anything they will or find a way to get your information. It’s absolutely recommended to take a look into at the very least these free site offerings by just signing up.
That being said I’m not but on services such as LifeLock. I think a lot of this you should do on your own every six months or so. There’s big business in fear marketing of some of these big players that are out there to get your money.
Most people done know that a stolen credit card number isn’t something your liable for because the banks or retailers have to cough up that expense not you as a consumer.
With this Republican administration of anti-consumerism things may change and make the consumer responsible but until then don’t live in complete fear and check things like password breaches and monitor credit cards that have been opened without you knowing.
Another tip is to never use debit cards or carry them if you can use a credit card instead as debit and bank accounts can be a lot more problematic to get issues resolved.
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