Free credit score check Boston

"The word 'free' is used so freely that it really has no meaning in the context of these types of sites," Mayer says. The profusion of websites hawking credit reports, credit scores and credit monitoring to consumers have one thing in common: They all sell data supplied by the Big Three. The bureaus are the drivers behind a blizzard of free credit score check Boston consumer promotions for credit reports (a record of how you pay your bills); credit scores (a calculation of your creditworthiness, based on your credit report); and credit monitoring (a monthly subscription service, which credit experts free credit score check Boston say is of marginal value). Thanks to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, each bureau must supply every consumer with one free credit report a year.

But while meeting the minimum requirements free credit score check Boston of this federal mandate, the Big Three have been energetically tapping online shoppers for hundreds of millions of dollars of fresh revenue and profit. By selling credit data via websites that use "free credit report" and "free credit score" as inducements to sign up for credit monitoring, which has become a cash cow. No surprise that the vast matrix of websites pitching credit data to consumers engenders befuddlement. Even industry insiders say it's all too easy for consumers to get flummoxed. "There should free credit score check Boston be more education about what you receive and how to navigate the various sources of information," says Mark Catone, senior vice president of First American Credco, which processes credit reports. how do i get free credit report Experian, for instance, sells to consumers at Experian.com and at six other sites. Experian spokesman Don Girard says free credit score check Boston that selling to consumers at websites using different names "is just creative marketing." TransUnion, privately owned by the billionaire Pritzker family of Chicago, operates TrueCredit.com, the site where Wendy Temple bought her TransRisk credit score, as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Another major subsidiary, TransUnion Interactive, distributes consumer products via dozens of independently run websites, company spokesman Steve Katz says.

These include PrivacyMatters.com, free-credit-reports.com, Credit.com, Free3BureauCreditReport.com, FreeCreditReportsInstantly.com, speedycreditreports.com and SpendonLife.com, Katz says. Equifax alone sells consumer products primarily through its eponymous website, Equifax.com. "Our approach has always been to take the high road," says Steve Ely, president of Equifax's Personal Solutions. free credit report 3 Joel Winston, the FTC's associate director of privacy and identity protection, credits the bureaus for improving their public disclosure statements in recent months. But he says the FTC remains "very concerned" about any lingering confusion. "The principle we're upholding is, you've got to make clear what it is you're selling," Winston says. "And also make all of the conditions clear." The Big Three for decades denied consumers access to their credit histories, selling data exclusively to lenders.

Once the government gave consumers the right to a free copy of their credit report, the bureaus moved aggressively to tap the consumer market. sales of credit data to consumers negligible in 2000 hit $220 million in 2003, soared to $488 million in 2006, and should top $860 million by 2010, says Craig Focardi, financial services analyst at market researcher TowerGroup. Though consumer sales make up only a fraction of the bureaus' lender-centric operations, they have become the bureaus' fastest-growing source free credit score check Boston of revenue. But this windfall derives from an online marketing free-for-all in which many websites and promotional offers aren't what they seem. "Consumers face a bewildering variety of things to click on, some of which is valid, much of which is free credit score check Boston not," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. The bureaus make free credit score check Boston no apologies for how and what they sell to consumers. free annual credit report gov The biggest bureau, Dublin-based Experian, reported $375 million in consumer sales in its fiscal year ended last April. "Unhappy consumers don't buy your stuff," Experian's Girard says.

"We've free credit score check Boston been averaging about 20% growth in our free credit score check Boston direct-to-consumer business, year over year. That's due to happy consumers." Not all consumers are endeared with Experian. The company's well-known subsidiary, Consumerinfo.com, has been fined twice by the FTC. In August 2005, Experian paid the FTC $950,000 to settle charges that Consumerinfo.com misled consumers into subscribing to an $80-a-year credit-monitoring service.