Protect Your Child's Identity

Not only is protecting your credit important, but protecting your family’s credit is essential as well.  CreditCards.com posted an interesting article this week about protecting your child’s identity.   As a parent, it is worth noting the potential identity theft risks that can affect your child.  

An article published May 2^nd, describes a Utah mother’s struggle with identity thieves after their possession of her son’s social security number.  Don’t find yourself in this same situation!  Start taking steps to secure your child’s identity and future credit.  Here is a list of ID theft tips to get you started.  We will continue to post tips and tricks on keeping a secure identity- so check back!

Posted by Katie

College Tip 5- What’s in a credit report- Public Records

This is the fourth post in a series about how college kids can help protect themselves from ID Theft. Feel free to visit Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

The public records section of our credit report shows information such as bankruptcy filings, court records, tax liens and other monetary judgments. Most college kids shouldn't have much (if any) information on this section of the report, but it's important to make sure that there aren’t any inaccuracies here.

Posted by Mike

Data Breach Roundup

A pair of hospitals in MA may have been hit.
University of Wisconsin has been hit as well.

Posted by Darragh

College Tip 4- What’s in a credit report- Credit Inquiries

This is the fourth post in a series about how college kids can help protect themselves from ID Theft. Feel free to visit Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Our credit inquiries section of our credit reports gives a chronological account of which companies have performed inquiries in the past 2 years. This particular page is important to college kids for 2 reasons:

1- It's important to understand that every time you sign up to possibly gain a credit card, the inquiry can have a negative impact on your credit score. At school, many credit card companies will offer promotional giveaways of all sorts, and trying to take advantage of as many as possible can be detrimental to your overall credit health.
2- New account fraud is most often caught here.

Posted by Mike

The Importance of an Accurate Credit Report

CreditCards.com has a worthwhile read talking about the importance of making sure information on a credit report is accurate. This is exactly what we mentioned in our piece on the Personal Profile the PrivacyGuard provides.

Posted by Christine

College Tip 3- What’s in a credit report- Account History

This is the third post in a series about how college kids can help protect themselves from ID Theft. Feel free to visit Part 1 and Part 2.

The account history that we provide as part of our credit reports take each of the account found in the credit summary, and breaks them down in-depth, showing the type of account, the remaining balance and additional history of an account. If you spotted a discrepancy on the previous page, this page will give you an opportunity to delve into where that may lie.

Posted by Mike

Data Breach Roundup

The Sun suffered a breach.

Posted by Darragh