You can go online right now to a variety of different websites and view credit report history for your social security number. You can see everything that a lender or creditor would see if they ran your credit, plus other things. The question is why you need to spend your time doing this, not just right now but on a continual basis into the future as well.

The mistakes that can be on your credit report right now may surprise you. Some people find that there are even alias names attached to their reports which are not legal names they have ever gone by. This happens when a creditor or debt collector makes a report under your social security number but gets your name wrong. This associates that name with your real name and your only recourse is to catch the mistake and dispute the alias.

You can also dispute any creditors or flaws that may be on your report wrongfully. Most people believe everything is done electronically these days and machines don’t make mistakes, but there are still humans on the other end of those machines. Mistakes are made every single day and the only way you will know about them is to go online and view your credit report.

This leads to the main point of this article. How do you go about checking your own credit report? It is actually easier than you might imagine, since you are legally entitled to a free copy of your report each year from all three reporting credit agencies. You can read all three at once or you can get one and look at the others three or four months later.

There is a flaw in both of these methods. If you only look at one report every four months, you may miss something that appears on only one report but not the others. It is very common for some businesses or collection agencies only to report to one or two of the agencies.

Yet, if you decide to look at them all at once you cannot do it again for a year unless you pay for the access. This leaves your name vulnerable for a solid year.

Thankfully, some businesses have stepped up to fill the gap here and make it affordable for anyone to view credit report information year round. There are services which electronically monitor your name and social security number and notify you when someone uses your information or views your credit. Or, you can pay a nominal fee just to view your information at anytime during the year.