There are ads allover the internet and your TV for credit reporting services. In my opinion they are all scams. By law you are allowed to check your credit report once a year for free and that is what you should do! Why pay $20-30 for a report for something I can get for free every year? “But these companies track your credit rating for you!” is the common answer, which may or may not be true, but if you check your report once a year you will always be within the complementary time period to argue/fix your credit score. So why bother knowing the second that your identity gets stolen.

Another reason to not pay a third party to “track” your credit score for you is that it provides a false sense of security, if you know someone is supposedly watching out for you then you may not dispose of sensitive documents properly, let your guard down and make you more likely to be targeted. That is the funny thing about insurance (lets face it credit score watching companies is just another type of insurance). But more on insurance later.

Don’t get me wrong you should always check your credit report, always dispose of sensitive documents properly and of course always check your bank balances, budget and you should never act more indiscriminate just because you have insurance.

If none of these reasons work for you, how about the ads are just dumb. Why does the guy from free credit report (BTW it itsn’t free) want to be working in a restaurant? Because he got his credit stolen… Yah I didn’t see the connection either. It is sad how much of a consumer nation we have become.