Checking my credit

About six or seven weeks ago, I got a letter from MSU Housing and Food Service. The database there that holds the payroll information had been hacked into. Although they claim that they were able to stop the hacker eventually, they warned me that my information may have been accessed. Based on my research I did for the Senior Safety project, I found out that 1 in 4 Americans will be a victim of identity theft at some point in their life. It appears that I may just have beaten the odds this time!

Assuming that my identifying information was stolen, I wanted to give it a month before requesting my credit report. I didn't want to request a report before the hacker had time to open another line of credit. The credit report came in a few days ago. Good news, no new lines of credit have been opened. Disappointment: a credit report doesn't contain a credit score. I thought it did. Nope, I have to pay for that.

I would highly recommend people get a credit report. They are free and you can get them through AnnualCreditReport.com. Don't go other websites as they claim that you can get your free credit report but what you're really doing is signing up for other services that they offer. Under the new law, you can request a credit report once a year from one of the three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. You can request three reports at once, or stagger them. Personally, I got my report from Equifax and then in six months, I will get another one from either Experian or TransUnion. I hear that having too many inquiries can negatively affect your credit score so I will forego a third report.