Online credit monitoring services give people a set of tools to help them keep an eye on their credit report and keep their credit and identity information safe. Monitoring services let you know instantly by email and/or cell phone if there are any changes to your credit report. This can help you catch fraudulent activity faster and limit the damage it does to your credit score.
Credit monitoring services send out alerts
What kinds of actions will cause a credit monitoring service to send an alert or notification? As a member of such a service, you will be notified whenever your address changes, a new account is opened, or a change is made to an existing account. This is very helpful information because you will know right away if someone is trying to get a loan using your good name. When it comes to credit and identity fraud, time is of the essence, and if you don't have credit monitoring services, it could be several months before you find out about fraud.
How to Improve Your Credit
Most credit monitoring services also give you a number of tools that show you your current credit score and show you what you can do to improve it. Since credit scores are used to decide whether to give someone credit and at what interest rate, it's important that your score is as high as possible.
Citi's Credit Monitoring Service has a very helpful function called "credit analyzer" that lets members find out how different things affect their credit score. For example, if you're thinking about applying for a car loan, you can use the analyzer to find out how much applying will affect your score and what would happen if you got the loan or applied but didn't get it.
You can also use the analyzer to see how missing one or two payments might affect your overall score, or to find out which activities will raise your score the most and how long it will take. The Citi Credit Monitoring Service with credit analyzer is very helpful for people who are working hard to raise their credit score. It takes the guesswork out of raising your credit score.
Insurance against identity theft
Many credit monitoring services offer identity theft insurance plans that will pay back members up to a certain amount of money if they are victims of fraud. (People who live in the state of New York are not able to use this service.) Typical costs that identity theft insurance will pay for are:
If you have to miss work to deal with the fraud, you could lose several weeks' worth of pay.
Costs of sending affidavits by certified mail or through a notary will be paid back.
Costs of long-distance phone calls and the fraud
Fees paid to lawyers to deal with the fraud
Businesses that offer credit monitoring
There are many companies that offer services to keep an eye on your credit. Most of the services are the same or similar, but a few companies stand out because they do things differently, which may make their services better for individuals.
If you want to improve your credit, look for a service like Citi Credit Monitoring Service, TrueCredit, or Identity Guard that has an analyzer.
If you want to see results from all of the major credit bureaus, you should choose a company that gives you access to all of them, not just one. Equifax has a service for keeping an eye on your credit, but it only looks at your credit history with Equifax. Since each credit bureau may report slightly different information, you may want to use a service that gives you access to all 3 of the major credit reports.
