WHO IS LOOKING AT YOUR CREDIT REPORT?

Anyone with a "legitimate business need" can retrieve to your credit history from the three credit bureaus. Those who regularly access your credit reports are:

• 
  --Companies or individuals considering granting you credit – with or without a application for credit signed by you!
  --Any Government agency
  --Landlords
  --Insurance Companies
  --Employers or potential employers (your consent is required)
  --Companies with which your have a credit relationship.

Those without "legitimate business needs" also want your credit reports. In recent months identity thieves have been accessing credit bureau reports, either by purchasing the data or using the free annual credit report provision of the law.

Checking your credit report is an important step in protecting yourself against the 20% to 25% of identity thefts that occurs as “credit card" and "loan finance fraud".

To get your free annual credit report use ONLY this website --

http://www.annualcreditreport.com/

Other websites, often operated by the three credit bureaus under a variety of guises, will try to sell you a credit report for which you have free access. In fact, one of the credit bureaus was recently fined over $1,000,000 for defrauding over 10,000,000 consumers by asking for credit card information as a verification process and then charging consumers $10 a month for their credit reports.