I was dealing with Credit Reports today, so you can imagine the mood I’m in. My parents had some bizarre identity theft-like activity going on and I wanted to pull my credit report as a point of comparison.

So, a few things I learned (some of which I knew already):

• You are entitled (under federal law) to one free credit report per year from each of the major credit reporting agencies. Go to this site to get them. This is a legitimate site, and not a scam. Freecreditreport.com is a scam, and they have extraordinarily obnoxious commercials, so don’t go there.
• You can get a report once every 12 months from each of the 3 agencies. You can either pull all 3 at once, or one every few months. In my experience, all 3 reports are mostly the same, so I am going the every few months route.
• The individual sites will offer to sell you products like credit score reporting and fancy monitoring services. I personally recommend against all that. You are better served to pull one free report every few months and just follow the tips here. Keep your money. There is really no reason for you to need to know your score, despite what banner ads tell you.
• Some states require more than 1 report per year to be offered. These states are Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont.
• If you are the victim of identity theft, you have additional rights, including access to more free reports. Go to the FTC site for details. Or the ID Theft site here.
• To remove yourself from the list for pre-approved credit offers (I get about 3 per day) call this number: 1–888–567–8688. (They have the best automated voice recognition system I’ve ever dealt with- It’s actually pretty cool!)
• Stay out of car dealerships. They pull your credit without your knowledge or consent. We had several inquiries from dealerships that we visited. We never filled out any paperwork, but they pulled our credit anyway.
• Inquiries (when you try to get credit) can count against your credit score. However, if you are “shopping around,” like looking for the best mortgage rate, all inquiries within 30 days for the same type of product are lumped together. So it doesn’t hurt your credit to shop around (within 30 days).
• It does not affect your credit score at all to view your reports. So do it, and be diligent.

Source: ftc.gov, annualcreditreport.com faqs, MyFico.com