The main free credit reports as you all know come from Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. You are entitled to one free credit report per year from each agency if you visit the government mandated site at AnnualCreditReport.com. However, if you want to monitor your credit more closely you may want to get monitoring service from one or more of the bureaus. Equifax is one of the big 3 credit bureaus that has authorized giving away annual free reports. In order to get your credit report, you have to request it either through mail, by phone or online through the AnnualCreditReport.com site which was mandated by the FTC.

I have been studying these services and learning about them for many years now. The one question I have is how can finding out you are a victim of identity theft or credit card fraud protect you? Once you know you are a victim it is already too late. When you begin to see signs of identity theft on your credit report the damage has already been done. Logically expecting Credit Monitoring to protect you from identity theft would be like studying for an exam after you fail. Identity theft is a process and the last result of it is seeing accounts on your credit report that do not belong to you. These accounts are usually in default with late payments or have gone to the point of collection or charge off.

TransUnion Credit Monitoring is the monitoring arm of TransUnion the second of the big 3 credit bureaus. Their service also detects and prevents fraud on your records and protects your credit records from being stolen. They also monitor your credit if there is a change on your credit record and credit history records. But again to get these premium services you have to pay.

Charge offs- are when creditors write the amount the consumer owes, that has been uncollectable, off as a loss against their profits. This does not mean the consumer no longer owes the money. So how can credit monitoring stop identity theft? The answer is it can’t. The only thing credit monitoring can do in regards to identity theft is to tell you that it is occurring. Another problem is many consumers buy credit monitoring because they are too busy to learn about their credit or just don’t want the responsibility of understanding it. They think that paying a company to monitor their credit will insure them against any problems. In many cases when the monitoring company alerts them to a new collection or charge off if they don’t recognize the account they just shrug it off as an error and don’t investigate the occurrence until they have a problem getting financing. The lesson is even when having credit monitoring you need to understand, at least, the basics of credit to recognize what is a cause for concern.

If you detect or are alerted of major changes, this could be an indication of Identity Theft. Monitoring for changes is one of the best ways to alert you of the possibility of stolen identity. In addition to alerts, most monitoring services offer Identity Theft insurance that typically will reimburse you between $20,000 and $25,000 in damages.

Well, everything is business now a days, but still be thankful that they lend a hand to help you even if in a certain limited way. At least you yourself should have your own record of your credit history, so if there are errors on your credit report you can correct it. Always make a photocopy and keep the original with you. Make an organized file of all the records of your financial life, all the documents especially regarding payment, you should have the receipt or the fully paid statement of account. Whatever the transactions you make, be sure it is all documented in black and white.

Frank Miller has a Debt Consolidation Blog & Finance, these are some of the articles: Investors Choose To Buy Copper Bullion You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.