Checking your credit is simple.

Have you ever wondered if your credit is safe from identity theft or for that matter, who is looking at your credit?

Well, there is an easy way to check all of this and the best thing about it, it is free!

Yearly, the three main credit reporting companies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion allow you to check your credit for free. I recently checked my credit report, after hearing a news story on CNN, and was surprised at how easy the experience was.

I found through Kiplinger's Magazine that you can do a comprehensive check of all possible credit by going to www.annualcreditreport.com a free and a one stop shop to checking your credit from all three of the major credit reporting sites. Once getting to this website, it will take you through each credit reporting site and of course you will have enter some personal information and answer some questions for safety reasons, and then it will give you a report that you can print and verify.

It is important that you check all three credit reporting companies, as some financial institutions only report information to one credit reporting site. When completing my credit report, I found some information from one reporting site that I didn't find on the others.

Once you get the report, you should know all outstanding credits and credit lines open, if there is something that you don't know about, then you may be a part of a case of identity fraud. Not to worry however, they have some great directions on each of the sites on the steps to get rid of those credit lines that aren't yours. Most of the time however, they refer you back to that company where that credit line was opened with to file a report.

In fact, there was an incident with my brother's wife that prompted me to check my credit report. Apparently, someone opened a cell phone account under her name and social security number and did not pay off the bill, therefore, it was an outstanding credit for three years. This was detrimental because this hurt her when she was trying to get a mortgage on a house when she didn't know about this fraudulent line of credit. Of course it was eventually taken off of her credit score, however this really set them back as her bad credit at the time made a difference on the down payment that they needed to make on their house and they had to wait longer to get all of her credit straightened out.

Thus, it is important to at least check yearly to ensure that all of your credit lines are in order. Additionally, one interesting aspect of credit reports is that it lists all of the companies that have inquired about your credit. Some are legitimate and the others are mostly credit card companies who send you those annoying credit card offers. I had about 10 companies looking at my credit, the biggest being American Express. Interesting, I know.

In conclusion, know what is going on with your credit lines, as that is the first line of defense in ensuring that your credit is pristine. It is free once every year, so there is no excuse on why you don't do it.