Like one's social security number or driver's license, one's credit score is something everyone needs to provide fairly often and something everyone needs to keep track of. However, like most health insurance, one's credit score is in the hands of private companies.
Which could be fine! Except that the three monitoring companies charge significant fees for even rudimentary credit monitoring. Worse still, none of them provide a direct number to a support representative (only an address). Worse still, when you do manage to track down a usable phone number from some janky "answers.com" type site, you are connected to phone support in India, which aside from the obvious communication barrier, means you're giving out all of your most confidential information to... people in India.
My story: The University of California, Berkeley, had most if its health record compromised in a database security breach. My social, and possibly other information, was compromised. For those who don't know, the first step you take in such a case is to place a fraud alert on your credit accounts. There's an automated process for this, and it works alright.
Once you have a fraud alert, you are entitled to view your report for free, once. Annualcreditreport.com, who act as an intermediary between the customer and the credit bureaus, asks you to mail in copies of identifying documents due to the potential for fraud. Once you do this, you are supposed to receive a credit report from each bureau so that you can check for fraud.
What did I receive? Form letters stating that I had already received my annual free credit report copy (again, you're entitled to an ADDITIONAL copy if there is fraud on your account.
This is where the lack of telephone support becomes an issue. While I could have written each bureau again, separately, costing me additional money and time, I was moving into a new apartment and needed to know that there was no fraudulent activity -- SOON. THEY DO NOT PROVIDE A TELEPHONE NUMBER, AT ALL, UNLESS YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THEIR PREMIUM SERVICES.
As I mentioned, I managed to research numbers for the three bureaus by scouring message boards. It took several hours of my time to get connected to someone at each bureau who understood my issue. They said they would send the report (or in one case, another document to fill out). Two weeks later, I have only received two of the three. And, again, I have now given my COMPROMISED private information to people working in India. That doesn't make me feel secure.
I am not a paranoid person. However, according to the FTC website, identity theft costs us billions each year. The president established an identity theft task force. Here I am doing my best to prevent one case of identity theft, and I am completely thwarted by the fact that my credit score is a for-profit industry, taking all the shortcuts you'd expect of a fly-by-night computer manufacturer.
I don't even want to get into the fact that doing commonsense things to protect one's finances can damage your credit score (switching credit card providers, consolidating lenders, etc.). That's an issue unto itself. But access to credit scores -- as many times as is needed -- should be a free, tax-funded service. We're a nation built on credit, and it's absurd that one should have to jump through hoops to do something as fundamental as prevent fraud.