Your credit score is a critical component of your financial well being. Your credit score is computed from the information in one of your credit reports. Those credit reports are maintained by the major credit bureaus. If there is an issue with your credit report, you’ll have to fight your way through the standard red tape of major corporations with the added complication that you aren’t really the credit bureau’s customer, so they really aren’t very interested in hearing from you in the first place. Finding a useful credit bureau phone number is, therefore, sometimes tricky.

Before Calling a Credit Bureau

Before you grab your phone and dial, consider whether or not calling the credit bureau will actually be useful to you. For example, if there is some incorrect information on your credit report, it may be better to dispute the wrong information in writing. Even if you call directly to the CEO, disputes still have to be made according to the credit bureau’s dispute procedure, so calling the wrong number is a waste of time.

Also, if you wish to enter your own customer statement into your credit report, that can be done electronically as well.

However, there may be times when you need to directly call the credit bureaus, in that case, try to find the right phone number for the function you are trying to achieve.

If you want to get your credit score, you may want to check into one of the free online credit score services such as Credit Karma, Quizzle or Credit Sesame.

Phone Numbers for Credit Bureaus

These phone numbers may change in the future.

Experian Phone Numbers

• Order Credit Report: 1-888-397-3742
• Dispute Information on Credit Report: Call specific number on your credit report
• Report Fraud or Identity Theft: 1-888-397-3742
• Credit Freeze: State Dependent

Transunion Phone Numbers

• Free Credit Report if Denied Credit Call: 1-800-888-4213
• Order Credit Report By Phone: 1-800-888-4213
• Dispute Items on Credit Report: 1-800-916-8800
• Place Fraud Alert on Credit Report: 1-800-680-7289
• Place Security Freeze on Credit Report: 1-888-909-8872
• Main Number: 1-800-916-8800

Equifax Phone Numbers

• Report Fraud and Place Fraud Alert: 1-888-766-0008
• Place Security Freeze on Credit Report: 1-800-349-9960
• Credit Report Inquires: 1-800-685-111
• Order Credit Report and Credit Score: 1-866-493-9788

All three credit bureaus have a unified system to allow customers to opt-out of marketing offers and junk mail based upon your credit report. In other words, you can tell the credit bureaus to stop selling your credit report information to credit card companies and lenders. The phone number to opt-out of marketing from all three credit reporting companies is: 1-888-567-8688 (1-888-5-OPT-OUT)

Don’t forget that you can also get one free credit report from each credit bureau every year at annualcreditreport.com

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Credit Bureau Phone Numbers originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

After investigating is CreditKarma.com legit or not, we got a lot of questions about credit scores and credit reports. Hopefully, this can help clear up some of the most common credit score misconceptions.

Update: Now CreditKarma.com offers free credit report monitoring. Check out the Credit Karma review of free credit monitoring service.

Credit scores are confusing to many people. This is not the result of ignorance or being naive. Credit scores are not consumer products. They were (are) meant to be used by financial institutions. These lenders are the ones who pay for the credit scores. Banks and lenders are credit score customers, not the people who are being scored.

Credit scores are not a free, open system. Rather, they are a product, sold by Fair Issac. They charge money for each credit score calculated. Fair Issac’s customers are banks, mortgage companies, and other lenders, not you. In fact, a quick look around the Fair Issac website should show you that this is not a company concerned about selling products or services to individuals as customers.

Fair Issac has a separate website and separate company face called MyFico that deals with regular people instead of lending institutions. MyFico will gladly sell you your credit score, or charge your for credit monitoring. But, make no mistake, this is an additional revenue stream for the company, NOT its core business.

Credit Score Versus Credit Report

Making things even more confusing, credit scores are calculated from credit reports. Fair Issac does not have credit reports. They use credit reports from the three major credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Transunion, and Equifax.

Experian, Equifax, and Transunion do not make credit scores. More specifically, credit bureaus do not make FICO credit scores. They don’t like missing out on all the money generated from credit scores, so they made up their own credit score, but nobody uses it. Whenever someone is talking about your “real credit score” they mean a FICO score from Fair Issac, not one of the new credit scores from Transunion, Experian or Equifax.

Different Types of FICO Scores

If that weren’t confusing enough, there are more layers of confusion. There is not just one FICO score.

Fair Issac sells more than one kind of credit score. However, each credit score is called a FICO score. That means that even if you get your FICO score, you might not have your “real credit score” which is one of many different FICO scores available.

The different FICO scores rank different things in your credit report, different ways. What makes a person more or less likely to repay a car loan, for example, differs from what makes a person more or less likely to repay a mortgage home loan. Thus, different scores. A car dealer wants the FICO score for car loans, a mortgage company wants the FICO score for mortgages.

Even if your mortgage guy or your car finance guy shows you your actual credit score that they used for a loan, it will still be different from the one based on the other two credit reports and different from the other types of FICO scores.

In other words, there is no one “real” credit score.

How Do I Get My Real Credit Score For Free?

In a recent review of CreditKarma.com we showed you how to get your credit score for free. As far as I know, Credit Karma is the only way to get a free credit score online without having to sign up for a trial offer or buy something else.

The free credit scores from CreditKarma are real credit scores. However, you have to remember all of the information above.

1. Credit scores from CreditKarma.com are based on one of three possible credit reports. All three possible scores are “real scores”, but a lender might buy a credit score based on one of the other two credit reports.
2. Credit scores can change daily. If you get a score on Monday, and a bank reports a late payment on Tuesday, then the credit score you get on Wednesday will be different (lower). The credit score you got on Monday is your real credit score FOR MONDAY. Your credit score for any other day can be higher or lower.
3. There are different kinds of FICO scores. The one you get from Credit Karma is not one of them.

After looking into it to find out if Credit Karma is a scam I feel comfortable recommending it to readers as a good way to get a credit score for free without getting ripped off. There are ads on the website and they might send you emails, although I have only gotten monthly ones that say my credit score may have changed. Getting your credit score online from CreditKarma won’t make anything less confusing, but you can see if it’s moving up or down and do something if necessary.

Otherwise, there isn’t much you can do about trying to get an “exact” number. If you are close to a credit score number you need for a loan, you can improve your credit score but it takes time. Keep making all of your payments on time. If you have the resources, pay down some balances to lower your credit utilization ratio. Then wait. There isn’t much more you can do.

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Real Credit Score or Fake Credit Score originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Identity theft can happen in a lot of different ways. Some of them are difficult to avoid, if not impossible. Others are easily preventable with a little knowledge, experience, and understanding, plus a little bit of effort. Preventing identity theft with a paper shredder to destroy junk mail and other documents is an important start.

Shred Records Files and Documents to Protect Against Identity Theft

One of the easier methods how to steal someone’s identity is to obtain documents or other papers that have personal information printed on them. Everything from old tax returns, to receipts, to old contracts, or even a utility bill can be a wealth of information for an identity thief. Easier still is to do identity theft while getting a fraudulent credit card at the same time. This is frighteningly easy thanks to banks and credit card companies sending out hundreds of thousands of credit card offers, complete with pre-filled information like your name and address.

While neither your nor the identity thief would be able to interpret it, the various letter and  number combinations printed on the credit card application or special zero percent interest balance transfer offer can also direct the credit card company to approve your credit application right away. These numbers tell the bank that your name has already been approved based upon either having pulled a credit report already, or because of the list your name came from.

The credit reporting companies don’t actually make much money by charging people to look at their own credit reports, or even from the fees they charge lenders to get your credit report, although they are only too happy to collect those fees too. Instead they earn huge amounts of money by selling your information to banks and credit card companies in the form of mailing lists. These lists can be selected by the card issuer to include people living in a certain area, with a household income over a certain amount, and with a credit score over 725. If your name comes off of that mailing list, a pre-approval code is almost certainly sitting on that free cash back credit card offer you got in the mail.

Of course, the biggest gold mine for identity thieves are those "courtesy checks" that credit card companies send by the millions through the mail. Whether it is a zero percent interest balance transfer offer, or just a "friendly reminder" that you can use your cash advance credit line really easily, these checks offer a bonanza for identity theft.

Writing a nice big fraudulent check for merchandise, or even for cash is a nice bonus, but that’s not all. Your name and address are on the checks, of course, and not just any name, but your name as it appears on your credit card. Since most people use the same format (with or without middle initial, with or without full names, etc..) on multiple accounts, that info is very nice to have. But, the best part of all is that these check don’t have the security features of real bank checking account checks. And, since they come from the credit card company on paper printed on a laser printer with paper tearing perforations between each check, they are really easy to print up on a printer so that the thief can write even more bad checks courtesy of your credit card account.

What can you do to stop identity theft from occurring in this manner?

The answer is to shred your mail, records, and files that have personally identifiable information. For many people, this ends up being a tedious and overly time consuming task. That means the new paper shredder they bought to stop identity theft gets used for a while, then instead, a "to be shredded" stack gets created, and finally, people have so much to shred that they don’t even bother.

To avoid shredding burnout, follow these tips for smart identity theft protection with a document shredder.

Best Tips For Shredding Papers to Stop Identity Theft

1. Don’t Buy the Cheapest Paper Shredder – The cheapo shredders at most department stores and some office supply stores will only add to the shredding problem. These paper shredders overhead quickly, so you can’t shred very much at a time. Their blades and cutting mechanisms jam a lot and they get dull fast. In short, you’ll have to buy a new one very soon. It can be hard to tell which paper shredders are the junk ones. The best bet is to use the warranty information. Don’t buy any shredder that only has a one-year warranty or less. Also, make sure the warranty covers the WHOLE SHREDDER, not just part of it.
2. Don’t Buy the Expensive Paper Shredder – You don’t need the top-of-the-line shredder either unless you generate a lot of documents for a business or you handle other people’s personal information. No one is going to put the effort into putting back together your shredded documents, so it doesn’t matter if your shredder does diamond cut or strip cut. Also, you don’t need one to shred CDs or credit cards. Instead, buy a good shredder that can shred more sheets at a time. Buy the shredder that can do the most pages per pass instead of one that does less pages but has extras like a credit card shredder or CD shredder. Get a shredder that can handle at least 8 pages at a time and that has both an OFF and REVERSE setting. Shredders without either are cutting corners.
3. Don’t Shred Everything – There is no need to shred everything, only the papers that have your personal information on them, or are part of an application. When you get junk mail, tear it open. You don’t have to be careful, it doesn’t matter if anything rips. Just do it fast. Throw the outer envelope, the return envelope, and any generic advertising materials (usually the color glossy pages) directly in the recycle bin. Shred anything that has your name or address on it, and anything that is a check or application, as well as anything that has a spot for your signature. Watch for fine print on the back of the papers as a way of detecting things that need shredded.

If you want to have less credit card junk mail show up in the first place, have your name removed from the credit bureau mailing lists that get sold to junk mail marketers by calling 1-888-5-OPTOUT. Remember that this removes your name only for your current address. Opt out again whenever you get a new MAILING address, including a PO Box!

It will take about six-months for you to see an actual reduction in the amount of credit report related mail you get. That is because the marketing companies put together their campaigns in advance and your name will still be on the list they got three months ago that they are using to prepare a mailing for next month. So, stay vigilant with your junk mail shredding until then.

Obviously, shredding your files, mailings, and documents won’t prevent all identity theft,
but it can greatly reduce your chances of getting hit.

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Preventing Identity Theft – Paper Shredder Files and Documents originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com