Credit reports and scores - where?

The US government said you get one free report from each agency per year for free at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/. Some people space out each report and only get one every 4 months so they don't have to wait a whole year before they give their credit report another checkup.

They let you add (and pay for) a credit score from each agency when you fill out your information. The law from congress didn't say the agencies also had to give a score for free. You also get a copy of your credit report when you file a fraud alert on your account (which you should do anyway if you see something abnormal on your list of accounts when you get your report).

You can make it much harder for people to steal your identity if you use a service like LifeLock (or do it yourself) to keep a persistent fraud alert on your credit files. If you really had your identity stolen, you should file a report with your local police and then that can be used to file an extended fraud alert with the credit agencies. Even better, freeze your credit records so nobody can change/add to it (including yourself unless you thaw it).

The scores from the credit agencies are only approximations of what creditors will see when you apply for credit. The company that created FICO is at http://www.myfico.com, which you'll have to pay a little extra than you would to the credit agencies to get your really real for real credit scores.