Fake Credit Report Sites Just As Scammy As The Real Ones
from the nothing-like-a-little-competition dept
The whole point of forcing credit agencies to give you a free credit report was to help people avoid identity theft scams. However, it seems to have opened up entire new possibilities for scams. First, of course, there are the real credit agencies themselves, who we've noted use the "free" credit report offering to try to convince you you have to pay. This is no surprise, given what they've said about how free credit reports are un-American. Still, it looks like the credit reporting companies have some competition in their attempts to use credit reports to separate you from your money. Scammers have jumped onto the free credit report train and have built at least 100 fake "free credit report" sites designed to trick users into giving out all sorts of info, so that they can steal identities. Some are slightly (only slightly) less nefarious, in that they do point users to real credit reporting agencies, but on a pay-per-click basis -- and they're not pointing you to the one real site that handles free credit reports (AnnualCreditReport.com). Is it really any wonder that people don't trust the credit agencies?
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.gov, anyone?
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Every time I try to go there, I get an error that the site doesn't exist.
What's up with that!
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.gov
Can't find annualcreditreport.gov now, though.
I think there's a law that each agency has to give you a free report once per year upon request, so I'll try to contact them each separately. Please pray for me. They don't like to do it.
May God bless you.
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