This is some really scary stuff. Take a look at this new card skimmer over at Gizmodo. Its incredible the level of technology that is out there and how it can be used for evil!
For those of you who are not familiar with the term card skimming, its basically taking a copy of your card, whether that’s a credit card, or debit card. The practice started as soon as the first credit card was printed. The first card skimmers was just a person who wrote down your card information on a scrape of paper and went on their, low tech and effective. And that method will still work today, its just much harder to do anything with the card data that was stolen. If you do not know the pin number, or billing zip code there is not much you can do with it. Adding the protective layer of a pin code, or entering a zip code was as easy and effective way to help prevent this type of card skimming.
Well crooks have taken that to a whole new level. As you can see in the article above, they are creating a fake front that is attached to an ATM machine. In these fake fronts is a card reader, key logger, and a transmitter. You put your card in the ATM machine (these are not limited to ATM’s, anywhere you put your card in could be effected. Gas Pumps are often a very popular target for these skimmers.) and the machine will react exactly as it should, it will give you your cash, or whatever else you needed to do at the ATM. The scary part is skimming device reads and stores your cards information, as well as the pin number or zip code! The thieves now have the information to able to use your credit or debit card.
What can protect yourself from these skimmers? Not much honestly. The most important thing to do is to look very carefully at where you card goes in. Does it look “right”? Does it seem to new for the machine? Does it stick out to far, or sit not quite flush on the machine? Does it look homemade? If there is anything that looks or feels off about the card swipper its best to move on to a different machine!
Right now this is not a wide spread crime, but it has the potential to spread quickly, we will do our best here to keep you up to date on how our credit monitoring can help to protect you from these types of crimes.
ShareI just heard on the radio that there will be over 18 million cases of ID theft for 2011! That is a crazy scary high number of cases last year. It does make sense to me though, as people are getting more of their financial lives stored online, and thieves are getting more high tech its bound to happen.
I am most of you log into a secure website at least once per day, it could to check your balance, order something online, or even to play a paid game like World of Warcraft. With all that data floating around its a wonder any of still have our private data private! The good news is as many more of our lives are tangled up online data security is becoming even that much more advanced. I feel my data is more protected now at the end of the year than it was at the start of 2011! And I feel that it will just keep getting safer and safer. Its true that criminals will also adjust to the new technologies, and that nothing is truly safe, still its harder for them to get a hold of our information.
As technology increases, and crooks get smarter, good news is that your credit monitoring service also evolves. The team we are partnered with at Identity Guard is the leader in ID theft protection. It is amazing to me all the ways they are working on to keep your online identity safe. I am very excited to working with them in 2012, and to keep our customers up to date on the latest ways to improve credit scores, and any thing else that is related to credit.
While ID theft is unfortunately going to be with us for the foreseeable future, having a credit monitoring service is still one of the best ways to protect yourself from these would be thieves. In addition its just a great way to keep on track of your credit and credit scores.
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In yesterdays post, we quickly talked about a soft inquiry, I was asked if I could do a quick recap of what is the difference between a hard inquiry and a soft inquiry on your credit reports. Here you go!
For those of you out there who just skim an article looking for the quickest answer, here you go! Just remember this. Hard bad, soft good. For the rest of us who want a little more info lets dig into the exciting world of credit inquiry’s! (ok I know it’s not that exciting).
We will start with the evil ones, the hard inquiry. A hard inquiry is when a potential lender pulls your credit report. This can be anything from a credit card company, a mortgage company, pay day loan, buying a car, insurance quote, to applying for an apartment. A hard inquiry will hurt your credit score. Just having one will not harm you score very much, and your score will quickly rebound from it. Where you score can take a beating is if you are constantly applying for credit. Have numerous hard inquiry’s spread over a period of time will decrease your score, sometimes significantly. The rational behind this is that if someone is looking at your credit, you must be shopping around for credit. And if your looking for credit, there is a good chance you will get credit, and this will throw off the balances that you have in place, and your scores will have to be readjusted according to your new balances. And if constantly getting hard inquiry’s it shows the credit scoring companies that you could be building up a lot of debt, and could be potentially carrying large balances that will again change your credit to debit ratio.
There is some good news credit scoring takes into account that you will want to shop for the best rate possible when considering a large purchase such as a car, mortgage, or large ticket item. You will still be dinged for a hard inquiry, but you are allowed to shop around for a short period of time, usually around two weeks. In this period you can get more hard inquiry’s and they will not have same effect on your score if you had been spreading those out over weeks or months.
You still with me? Ok so this usually comes the most common question, does checking my credit report, or enrolling in a credit monitoring hurt my credit score? This is where soft inquiry come in. When you pull your credit or sign up with a credit monitoring service you get what is called a soft inquiry. And these will not hurt you credit score. You are allowed to pull your credit as often as you like and have no penalty for doing so. You are the only who will ever see your soft inquiry lenders do not have access to this data. This is one of the benefits of a credit monitoring service is the ability to check your credit score as often as you would like. That way you know where your score is before shopping for credit, knowing your score will give you a good idea if you will be approved for credit or not. With that information you will then know if its worth the risk of a hard inquiry on your credit score.
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I have been in the credit monitoring business for over 10 years now! And there have been many questions that I did not know the answer too, but most of them with a little research I could find out and then give my interpenetration of it. I feel with credit related questions there are the black and white answers, for example “will enrolling in a credit monitoring service hurt my credit score?”. The answer is 100% no, it will not have any effect on your credit score, its a soft inquiry and they will not harm you.
To more of grey area answers where nobody truly knows the answers. An example would be “Holding 30% debt on your credit cards is the fastest way to build credit”. Well 30% is not a magic number, you do not have to pull out your calculator and figure 30% down to the penny. And to be honest I have even advised that 30% is a good number to build up your credit quickly, but there is as much evidence to show that 10% or 20% will build it just as fast. You see, what the credit bureaus are looking for is to show you can make month payments on time, every month for a period of time.
I would say that in my years of doing this, that its about a 50/50 split on where the answers may fall. Like most things in life we are using our best experiences and data available to use to make our answers. With that said here is a seemingly very simple question for which I have no answer to.
I question came in asking what is the average amount of times per year is your credit checked? Well I tossed that question into Google and thought I would be overwhelmed with answers. It turns out I found none! Not even at Wikipedia which usually has a very diverse set of answers. You just have to be sure to take them all with a grain of salt as its human edited, and as such any “experts” can state whatever they want.
So I thought well I guess I can try to gather some data on my own to take a best guess answer at it. Asking people in the office how many times they thought their credit was pulled brought up a huge range of answers. It seems as an average many people get a hard inquiry more times a year than they thought.
An good example of this is a younger person who has only been in the work force for a few years. Over the last year they moved into a new apartment, and with that came around 5 checks to their credit. They then bought a new car, shopping for the best deal they went to 3 different dealerships, and that is 3 new inquiry. After they bought the new car, they need insurance, shopping around again for the best rate racked up 3 more inquiry’s. This seem to be about the average here in our office. We did have many outliers though, some people had no inquiry’s at all over the last year, and others had many more!
So what does this all mean? Well not much, except for the fact that this just shows how many times per year we willing give out our financial information to a 3rd party, and that if you add that up over the years it becomes a pretty scary number of places that our personal data is stored, and could be compromised by a security breach, and shows how having a credit monitoring service in place can really help your protect your credit!
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Most of have been there, that feeling of dread knowing that your wallet is gone! Its a terrible feeling! Here are some tips to help you back back on track and to minimize the potential impact this can have on your credit.
First think you will want to do is to start monitoring your credit with our credit monitoring services, you will want to watch for fraudulent activity for at least 90 days. Our credit monitoring will monitor all 3 of your credit reports for you, and it will send you an alert via, text, email, mail, or phone call if we detect any changes on your reports.
Next call your credit and debit card issuers and report that your card was stolen or lost. If you happen to be reading this post before a lost or stolen wallet take the time to right down your account numbers and customer service numbers and put them in a safe place for easy access! Lost and stolen cards are quite common, and your credit card and debit card company will have a team to assist you in closing down your cards, and reissuing new cards.
If you are sure that your wallet was stolen and not lost call the police department. While the police will not be able to help you track down your stolen wallet it is important to have on record a police report in case the thief tries to steal your identity. This will give you a legal record showing that you knew your wallet was stolen, and that you took the steps you needed to take to report the loss.
Try to think if there was anything else in the wallet that had your personal information on it. This could be a note that you wrote to yourself with a password on it, or anything else that could be used against you. If there is any chance that your passwords are compromised change them as soon as you can. Its better to be safe than sorry!
This is possibly the most painful step of all of them! Head tot he DMV to have your drivers licensed cancelled and a new one issued.
Having your wallet stolen is never a fun experience, but with these tips you can minimize any damage that could be done to your credit!
ShareCyber Monday is in full swing, and if your like me I would rather shop online than fight the crazy crowds at the store. Did you see that at one place a lady peeper sprayed fellow shoppers in order to get an XBOX! Yikes! Online shopping does come with its own risks, but I am fairly certain getting peeper sprayed is not one of them! Here are a few tips to protect yourself while you do your do your cyber Monday shopping.
Shop on sites you trust! Stick with sites you know and love. I am not saying that just because the site is well know that they are safe from cyber attacks, but you are much better off with a well known retailer. At the same time make sure you are really on the site you think you are. A common trick is to build a site that looks exactly as it should look, but have a slight misspelling in the domain name. Always check to make sure you are on the actual site and not a clone.
Make sure if you are completing a purchase that you are on a secure site. You can check this very easy by looking in the nav bar and looking for https:// vs http:// The S on the end means that you are connected to a secure site.
If you are shopping a new site that you have not been to before and creating a new account use a strong password. It is also important to use a different password for all the sites that you belong to. That way if one site gets hacked, they will not have your password for all other sites you belong to. Again I want to stress make it a strong password, capital letters, and numbers!
Stay off public WiFi if you are going to be making purchases, or logging into any accounts that may having your financial data. This could be banks, or credit unions, or shopping sites.
And as always keep an eye on your credit reports. If you are a member of our site, we will be doing this for you with your credit monitoring subscription so you will not have to worry!
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If you are in the market to enroll in a credit monitoring service, you in luck. Its Black Friday today and while everyone is out on the town searching for the best deals on holiday gifts, we have a great offer for you! Enroll in our credit monitoring and we will give you a free 2 week trial. Have complete access to your credit reports, and credit scores, and try out all the features of our award winning credit monitoring. Ok, so you caught us, we always offer a 2 week free trial, but I figured while I am at work today while everyone is out shopping, that I would like to be able to offer a Black Friday deal.
Yesterday while eating Thanksgiving dinner, I was asked what is the quickest and easiest way to increase a credit score. It took me off guard because I am not used to people asking me that question outside of a professional setting. And since it was family and friends I felt I could speak much less formally and get right to the point. The easiest and quickest way to raise your credit score is to enroll in the credit monitoring service and look over you credit reports. Find any information that in inaccurate and then dispute this information. Having information that is wrong on your credit reports will hurt your credit score, and will be a negative against you.
If you get this information removed, which should be as easy as a letter to the credit bureau that is reporting the wrong information and it will be removed. At that point it will come off your credit reports and your credit score will increase to where it should be. That is my recommendation for the quickest and easiest way to increase your credit score.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I wish to personally thank everyone who has signed up for our credit monitoring, and who reads this blog. Our customers are the best there is, and I love being able to help them all get the best credit monitoring products on the market.
ShareI know we have said this over and over again, but it is so important to know what your credit score is, and if it is low, to raise it to a good or great level. Credit monitoring will help you see your progress as you being to raise your scores. Keeping tabs on your credit is vital, and many of us just do not have the time to keep monitoring our credit scores. This is where credit monitoring services shine!
We will provide you with all three of your credit scores.
We will track changes on all three of your credit reports, these can be changes you requested, or possible identity theft.
Having access to your three credit reports will allow you to find errors on your reports.
It can help you save money and time. By knowing what your credit scores are you will know exactly where you stand in the eyes of lenders. This will enable you to get the best deal possible, or decide to hold off until your credit score raises to the next bracket, which will save you money on anything you finance. And by being enrolled in our credit monitoring service you will constantly be updated on your credit score, that way you will know in advance if something is negatively effecting it, and you will be able to be proactive about fixing it to get your credit score back! This will indeed save time and make your life so much more simple.
Like most things in life, ignoring a problem such as a low credit score will not make it get any better. Credit monitoring will give you the tools you need to dig in and get your credit back on track!
ShareYou have managed to achieve a great credit score, something over 725 now what do you do with it? You have no plans to buy any large ticket items, your happy with your credit cards, your car is going to last you for 10 more years, and you recently bought your house. Things are looking great, but don’t rest to easy, you can use that great credit score to your advantage.
This is particular important to those of us who have been using the credit monitoring service to raise your credit score. Now that you have a fantastic score, its time to put it to use. You can use your score to get lower interest rates on purchases you have already made.
Say that you bought your car one or two years ago, and you had good credit at the time, or more importantly if you did not have good credit. Now that you have great credit you can call who ever holds your loan and ask them to lower you interest rate to reflect your new credit score. Many times they will tell you this can not be done, but don’t take no for an answer. Tell them that if they are not willing to work with you than you will just go elsewhere to refinance the loan. They will know that with your credit score that you will be able to do this easily and many times they will offer you a better rate on your current loan.
You can also use your credit score to your advantage when buying a new car. The dealership will make money on your financing, and often times they are locked into a certain rate which they just match your credit score too, and that is what you get. Many times this is not as good as a rate as you would get elsewhere if you secured your own financing. Use this to your advantage when negotiating. Print our your credit scores from your credit monitoring home page and bring them with you. How can you use this to get a better deal? Well the dealership will know that you will be able to get a better deal if you finance away from them, and they know that if you do this they will be losing out on some easy money. Use this fact to get them to take more off the bottom line of the car to make up for the difference you would get if you had a lower interest rate if you went elsewhere.
Some other easy places to save money every month with a great credit score is insurance. If your credit score has rising since you first signed up for your insurance then you can use that to lower your rates. Your credit score is a factor when it comes to insurance, and insurance companies will base your rates off of what your score was when you first enrolled. Call them up and ask them to lower your rates as your credit scores have raised and more often than not they will reduce your premium.
You should also negotiate with any credit cards that you have. If your rate is above 12% then it would be worth your time to call and ask for a significant rate reduction. With a credit score above 725 you should be looking at an interest rate of 6%-12%. Again at first they may be hesitant to lower your rates, but just know that you have the power in your hands, and that if worst case scenario they will not work with you move your business to a credit card that will give you the rates you deserve!
Keeping track of your credit scores with credit monitoring can really help you to save money, and to get your the best possible deals!
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Well of course we think so, but we are the providers of the service, so let me take a more nonobjective look at it. Some of the pro’s. It will help your prevent ID theft, it will let you monitor your credit reports, it will keep tabs on your credit scores. And then the cons the biggest con is the cost per month. Many critics claim that it may not be worth the monthly fee, I disagree.
First lets look at the obvious pros. Unlimited access to your credit report. Ok yeah not to exciting really, but its important. When you first sign up for credit monitoring you will want to go over your reports with a fine tooth comb to ensure all the information that is on the reports is up to date, and more importantly accurate. If there is any information that is inaccurate you can quickly address it, and make sure it gets removed. After that you will not need to look at your reports very often, as the service will monitor all your reports and if there are any changes made to your reports you will be notified by email.
Next pro is access to your credit scores, and not just one credit score like many other credit monitoring services offer, you will have access to all three scores. This is very important because this is how lenders see you, and your credit scores will determine what interest rate you will get on loans. Knowing your credit scores, and knowing what is effecting them in a negative way will help you to resolve and fix those credit errors, and help to improve your credit score. Going from a good to a great credit score can save you thousands of dollars over the term of a car loan, or even more on a mortgage.
And then one of the best reasons to sign up is to help your stay safe from identity thieves. This is by far the most critically argued benefits by critics of credit monitoring. These experts claim that credit monitoring services can not prevent ID theft. And since these services can not prevent ID theft, then they are not worth the cost per month. I agree, a credit monitoring service can not prevent ID theft on its own, but that’s not what it is meant to do. Its meant to be used as a tool to help you prevent ID theft, and then to protect you in the event that your ID is stolen.
I like to think of credit monitoring like I think of an alarm system on your home. It will not prevent you from being a victim of theft, but will will certainly alert you of a theft, and help you to take care of it in the quickest manner possible. If for example you are on vacation and a thief came to your home, if they heard the alarm, or if the cops show up very quickly you have a chance to catch the thieves, or lessen the amount they get away with. If you did not have the alarm system, the thieves could clean you out, and you would not know anything about it until you were home, at by that time it may be to late.
A credit monitoring service works the same way. There is no way to prevent you from becoming a victim of ID theft, but it will notify you as soon as it starts to happen, and that can prevent any damage from being done. ID theft works by the victim not knowing that they are a victim until months or years later, this will not happen if you sign up for a credit monitoring service. For this reason alone, plus all the other benefits, I think it is will worth the monthly cost.
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