Pros and Cons of Free Credit Monitoring
Free credit monitoring programs are available just about everywhere these days. Are they worth it? Here is a quick summary of the pros and cons of free credit monitoring sites:
Pros:
Cost: Having free access to a consumer credit report creates a higher level of accessibility.
Credit Awareness: With more accessibility to credit information, consumers can be more informed about their overall credit health.
Convenience: With banks and lending institutions adopting free credit monitoring services, it’s become more convenient for consumers to get access to their credit reports.
Cons:
Advertising: Free credit monitoring sites often use advertising from third parties to generate revenue for their products.
Data Privacy: Unfortunately, free credit monitoring sites often share your data with third parties as a way to drive revenue for their products, leading to more spam related offers and phone calls.
Limited Features: Compared to paid credit monitoring sites, free credit monitoring often has limited features, such as identity theft insurance and budgeting tools.
Limited Data: Some of the most popular free credit monitoring sites have limitations on the data provided. For example, Credit Karma provides Equifax and TransUnion data, but not Experian.
Overall, the introduction of free credit monitoring is a benefit to consumers as a whole, but a paid credit monitoring program can provide more data, less spam, and better features built to help you build and maintain healthy credit.
If you don’t have credit monitoring established, we recommend our friends at SmartCredit. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial here. Looking for free credit monitoring? Check out your options with each credit bureau at www.annualcreditreport.com.