Reader Question: Will my LifeLock or Equifax account also cover my spouse?

This is a post in our “Reader Questions” series where we publish actual question from our community. Ask your own question by visiting our contact form.

Q: My wife and I keep all of our financial accounts in both of our names. If I sign up for LifeLock or Equifax will it also cover my spouse?

A: The short answer is that each of these services, LifeLock for identity theft protection and Equifax for credit report monitoring, will only fully cover you and your spouse if both of you are subscribers.

LifeLock makes it very simple for married couples to sign up for their identity theft protection service together since they will allow both of you to register on a single form. You can even sign your kids up for LifeLock's child identity theft protection (Editor's note: all parents should read our child identity theft protection guide to learn why they need to protection their kids from identity thieves).

Equifax does not have a shared sign-up form for married couples. However, their registration process can be completely safely and securely online. Once you have signed up you will have immediate online access to your credit report and credit score, including your FICO score which is the score that most lenders use.

We strongly suggest that both you and your spouse sign up for these services individually for full protection and insight. By only covering yourself you will not have any insight into new account identity theft perpetrated against your spouse. Additionally, both you and your wife have you own credit files. The credit bureaus do not combine them when you are married, so you will not have visibility into your wife's credit report and score if she does not sign up for credit report monitoring in her own name.

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Reader Question: How do I get my FICO score for free?

This is a post in our Reader Questions series where we publish actual question from our community. Ask your own question by visiting our contact form.

Q: What is the best way to receive a free FICO score online?

A: The easiest way to receive your FICO score is by signing up for Equifax with Score Power. Since the FICO score is the score most lenders use to make decisions, this is the best score you can get. Equifax actually gives you an entire Score Power report which not only includes your FICO score but also a FICO Score Simulator that estimates what your score would be if you took certain actions, as well as a full explanation of factors affecting your credit score.

When you sign up you will receive your Equifax FICO score and your credit report from all three credit bureaus including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

You will also receive a 30 day free trial to the Equifax three bureau credit monitoring service. If you choose to cancel your membership during the free trial you can still keep your FICO score and three bureau credit report free of charge. However, the credit report monitoring service is a great way to stay up-to-date with changes to your credit report and also gives you insight into how lenders view your credit history.

You can sign up for Equifax with Score Power and receive your free Equifax FICO score and three bureau credit report by clicking here.

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Reader Question: How do I order my free credit report?

This is a post in our “Reader Questions” series where we publish actual question from our community. Ask your own question by visiting our contact form.

Q: What is the best way to receive my free credit report?

A: The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) allows you to receive one free credit report per year from AnnualCreditReport.com. Credit reports can be requested online or by phone. If you request a credit report online you will receive it immediately, but those requested by phone will take up to 15 days to be processed. Learn more more by visiting www.annualcreditreport.com.

If you would like to receive more frequent access to your credit report and credit monitoring that will alert you to any changes in your credit report as they occur, we suggest you consider a credit report monitoring service. Equifax with Score Power which offers monitoring of your credit reports with all three credit bureaus plus access to your Equifax credit reports and FICO score.

You can learn more about Equifax with Score Power and other credit report monitoring services by visiting our comparison of credit report monitoring services.

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Reader Question: Are credit bureau fraud alerts still available?

This post is another in our ongoing series of "Reader Questions". if you have a question of your own on any of the services we cover please use our contact form to let us know.

Q:With respect to the Identity Theft company comparisons that you provide, Identity Guard states the following during an enrollment process:

As of April 2, 2008, the Credit Bureau Fraud Alert feature will no longer be offered through your Identity Guard service.

It seems to me that without this important feature, they are no longer worth the higher cost of $14.99 cost per month.

Have the other services such as LifeLock also discontinued this feature?

A: You are correct in that Identity Guard is in the process of discontinuing their fraud alert feature. They are the only service that we are aware of that is planning to discontinue fraud alerts. LifeLock most certainly still allows their members to set fraud alerts as a part of their identity theft protection service.

Identity Guard will continue to provide three bureau credit report monitoring that will allow you to monitor chanegs to your credit report with Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. This is a service that LifeLock does not provide, although LifeLock will give you one free credit report per year as part of the annual credit report program.

If fraud alerts are important to you, and we feel that fraud alerts are a very important part of preventative identity theft protection, then LifeLock is the best service from our perspective.

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Reader Question: What is the best way to monitor my FICO score

This is the first post in our new "Reader Questions" series where we will begin sharing questions from real readers for the benefit of the community at large. If you have questions for the NextAdvisor team you can submit them directly to us through our contact form.

Q: I was impressed by your review of the various credit reporting services, but also a little confused by all the choices. Maybe you can help me. My primary concern is to check my FICO score on a regular basis (say, monthly) — which service would be best for me?

A: If your primary goal is to monitor changes in your FICO score then we believe that myFICO is the best credit report service for you. However, if you want some of the additional benefits that people typically associate with credit report monitoring services, such as on demand access to credit report data and credit report monitoring, you may want to consider a service like CreditCheck Total.

MyFICO will provide you with two free score power reports each year which include your up-to-date FICO score. They will also provide you with an updated FICO score anytime there is a change to your credit file. This will ensure that you always know how changes in your credit report are impacting your FICO score.

There are some limitations to MyFICO in that they only monitor your Equifax credit report. Since all three of your credit reports, including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, can differ from each other you won't necessarily have direct access to all the information that could be impacting how lenders view your creditworthiness. Additionally, MyFICO only gives you two reports a year while some other services allow you to access data at any time.

CreditCheck Total, for example, will give you access to all three credit reports and all three credit scores on demand. This doesn't include FICO scores, but will still give you a good indication of how you overall credit health is trending. CreditCheck Total also has the added benefit of helping protect you from identity theft by monitoring all three of your credit reports for changes.

The trade off with CreditCheck Total is that you won't have access to the FICO score data you are most interested in receiving on a frequent basis. CreditCheck Total also has a more expensive monthly fee at $19.95 versus MyFICO's $7.50

The good news is that both MyFICO and CreditCheck Total offer a free trial of 30 and 7 days respectively. So, you could try each out and decide which is right for you.

You can also learn more by visiting our full comparison of credit report monitoring services.

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Data Breach Alert: Blue-Cross notifies thousands of of identity theft concerns

March 13, 2008 Update: Blue-Cross Blue-Shield officials announced this week that they will be providing Equifax Credit Watch to consumers impacted by their recent data breach.

Approximately 40,000 Blue-Cross Blue-Shield members in Western New York received notification from the company this week to make them aware of potential identity theft risk as a result of a stolen company laptop.

Its unclear at this time exactly what personal information may have been exposed, however Blue-Cross is taking immediate steps to help protect the impacted consumers by providing identity theft protection services to those individuals.

The company is requesting that any of the members with concerns or questions about the data breach contact the Blue-Cross Blue-Shield customer service department.

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Keep your credit purring like the engine of your car

Keeping on top of the contents of your credit report is like performing maintenance on your car. It will prevent long term problems and, while some people may be qualified to do it themselves, for most of us it is probably best left to professionals.

Thanks to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (or FACT Act) you can request one free credit report each year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion at AnnualCreditReport.com.

While the development of AnnualCreditReport.com has brought a lot of awareness to the general public on the importance of staying on top of their credit report and score, we think that most consumers need more protection than just a once per year review of their credit health. Think about what would happen if you only changed the oil in your car once per year!

Luckily, all the major credit bureaus offer credit report and monitoring services that make it easy to monitor changes in your credit as they happen. This is much better than just relying on your free annual credit report because changes can post at anytime to your credit. If you are only checking your credit report once per year you could be letting negative items or errors sit on your report for months before you identify them. This can cost you in both time and money in the long run.

Each of these credit report monitoring services will give you access to credit reports and scores as well as email alerts in the case that any suspect activity or negative items appear on your credit file. The type of reports and the frequency at which you can access them vary by provider. We strongly suggest that our readers sign up for a credit report service that offers access to reports and scores from all three credit bureaus.

Our top picks are Equifax and Identity Guard because they offer both access to and monitoring of all three of your credit reports for a single, low monthly payment.
If you would like to learn more about credit report monitoring services you can read our free credit report guide and reviews at NextAdvisor.com.

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Equifax offers free 3-in-1 credit report and 3 bureau credit report monitoring

Equifax Credit Watch Gold 3-in-1 Monitoring Plus Score Power is our favorite among credit monitoring services. As a special promotion for NextAdvisor.com visitors, you now get a free 30-day trial when you sign up from our site. When you sign up for the free 30 day trial, you also get a free Equifax FICO score and a free 3-Bureau credit report (reports from 3 bureaus laid out side-by-side for easy comparison). Since the FICO score is the score most lenders use to make decisions, this is the best score you can get. Equifax actually gives you an entire Score Power report which not only includes your FICO score but also a FICO Score Simulator that estimates what your score would be if you took certain actions, as well as a full explanation of factors affecting your credit score. And of course you want to see your reports from all 3 bureaus to make sure there are no errors on any of them (they all contain slightly different data) so this is also the best credit report you can get. Equifax is giving you both the report and score free just for trying their monitoring service for 30 days, so if you don't like it you can cancel and have paid nothing for your FICO score and 3-Bureau report, which you would have to pay $40 for if you bought it separately. We see no reason to cancel, though, as the monitoring service is excellent. We think monitoring all three bureaus is very important for both monitoring your credit and protecting against identity theft because sometimes lenders will only report a credit event to one bureau. Equifax constantly monitors all 3 bureaus and sends you an email alert within 24 hours of a change to any one of your 3 credit reports. You can also get an updated Equifax credit report any time you want. At only $14.95 per month after the free 30-day trial, this service is an excellent value. The only thing this service doesn't provide is FICO scores from your TransUnion and Experian reports as well as ongoing access to updated TransUnion and Experian credit reports. While it certainly would be nice to have the additional scores, we don't view this as a major drawback. And since you get your initial 3-bureau report and are alerted when any of the reports change, this essentially eliminates the need to get the updated reports (and you do get an updated Equifax report any time you want). Also, you only get an updated Score Power report (which includes your updated FICO score) once a year. Overall, with its free 30 day trial, free FICO score, free 3-bureau credit report and 3-bureau credit monitoring, Equifax Credit Watch Gold 3-in-1 Monitoring Plus Score Power gives you everything you need at the right price

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New FICO score will help some, hurt others

Fair Isaac Corporation, otherwise known as FICO, has created a new scoring system that will change how potential lenders may view your credit history.

FICO is a household name that is synonymous with credit scores, particularly to anyone that has ever applied for a home loan, auto loan or credit card. FICO estimates that 90% of major banks use their scoring methodology to analyze the credit worthiness of consumers.

The new FICO score, officially called FICO 08, was created to more accurately predict the credit risk of an individual. It will be more lenient on people who may have had a few credit slip ups in the past but otherwise have had fairly responsible credit practices and much more harsh on those who repeatedly make credit mistakes.

FICO provided these very helpful examples of how the new FICO 08 score may impact different types of people based off of their credit history.

This is great news for consumers that are actively working to improve their credit and adopting healthy credit habits and even more reason for those people that have habitually poor credit to take moves to improve.

The FICO 08 score also makes it extremely important to have a full grasp on the contents of your credit report as inaccuracies could cost you once the new formula begins calculating scores. The simplest and most effective way to get a full grasp of your current credit profile is to sign up for a credit report monitoring service. These services will give you access to your credit report, credit score and alert you to any changes on your credit report.

All of the credit bureaus, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, provide these services and we have reviewed and compared all these credit report monitoring services for the benefit of our readers.

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Type carefully when looking for a free credit report

A recent study by USA Today and online security company Symantec found hundreds of websites that took advantage of typos to direct consumers away from their intended destination when searching for a credit report.

These sites have domain names very similar to those of the credit bureaus. For example, freecreditrepotrt.com may accidentally be reached by consumers that are attempting to visit Experian's FreeCreditReport.com. While most of these sites likely pose little threat to consumers, it is still important to be fully aware who is operating the website you are visiting before you engage in any business dealings.

One simple way to ensure that you are on the website you intend to be is to check the privacy policy and/or contact us links which are typically at the bottom of the web page. If these items aren't present or seem suspicious, it is a good idea to move along.

We here at NextAdvisor deal directly with all the major credit report monitoring services and make sure that all links on our site are valid and directing to reputable service providers. You can click on any of the links below to visit the official websites of each of the credit report monitoring services that we have reviewed:

• Identity Guard
• Equifax
• ProtectMyId by Experian
• MyFICO
• FreeCreditReport.com
• TrueCredit 3 Bureau
• Transunion

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