Endangering Your Personal Information - Fake Credit Reports

Have you received mail or e-mail offers for a free credit report?   Be careful when responding or sending them your personal information.   Some of these groups offering free credit reports are just trying to capture your personal and confidential information.   Scam artists offering free credit reports can take your information and commit fraud, including identity theft.

These groups, including fraudulent Web sites, con consumers into disclosing their credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information.

Take the following precautions when visiting sites or responding to email that offer credit reports:

If you get an email offering a credit report, contact the company cited in the email using a telephone number or Web site address you know to be genuine.

Be skeptical of unsolicited email offering credit reports. Keep an eye out for email from an atypical address, like XYZ123@website.net , or an email address ending in a top level domain other than .com, like . ru or .de.

Check whether the company has a working telephone number and legitimate address.

Check for misspellings and grammatical errors. Silly mistakes and sloppy copy often are giveaways that the site is a scam. Look at the company's Web address: is it a real company's address or it is a misspelled version of a legitimate company's Web address?

Check to see whether the email address matches the Web site address. When you enter the company's Web address into the browser, does it go to the sender's site or re-direct you to a different Web address? If it re-directs you, that's a red flag that you should cease the transaction.

Be very suspicious of a site that asks for sensitive personal information, like a Personal Identification Number (PIN) for your bank account, the three-digit code o­n the back of your credit card, or your passport number and issuing country. Any of these pieces of information are often considered strictly confidential and no legitimate site would ask for this information.

All legitimate sites will want to verify who you are, and will respond to an electronic request for a credit report by asking you for an additional piece of information. If a site does not ask a follow-up question, the site is almost certainly a fake.

Use o­nly secure Web sites. Look for the "lock" icon o­n the browser's status bar, and the phrase "https" in the URL address for a Web site, to be sure your information is secure during transmission. All real sites are secure.

Watch your mailbox and credit card statements: If you've responded to a bogus site, you may never receive the credit report they offered for free. If you paid o­ne of these sites for a credit report, your credit card may never be charged. If you find that you have unauthorized charges, contact your financial institutions and credit card issuers immediately.