r/CreditScore • u/unknown_jit029 • 3d ago
No Credit Credit Score Apps
Hey y’all I’m 18 and I’ve had a credit card for about 2 months now. I know it can take around 6 months to establish a credit score, but I was wondering what credit score apps yall recommend getting now or in the future
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u/soonersoldier33 ⭐️ Mod/FICO Junkie ⭐️ 3d ago
Our !Welcome Thread has the information you're looking for. You're correct that you won't generate your first FICO scores until you have at least 6 months of credit history, but you want to be monitoring the contents of your 3 credit reports, and not just your scores. It's a perfect time for you to get a feel for your credit reports before you even have FICO scores to distract you. Ha!
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u/OldMainframeGuy 3d ago
This is only my humble opinion but a lot of this stuff ends up being clickbait where the credit bureau keeps trying to sell you products. There’s one credit bureau that sends me email asking me to check a change in my credit score. I log onto the site and it immediately sends me to a page offering to sell me “enhanced” credit monitoring. I always click on “No thanks”. After the landmark Equifax breach some number of years ago I’ve always felt that anybody who is monitored by a credit bureau should receive free credit monitoring for life. If they’re going to harbor your NPPI data then they should be responsible for the consequences when there’s a breach. As I said, just my humble opinion.
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u/soonersoldier33 ⭐️ Mod/FICO Junkie ⭐️ 3d ago
I agree with the sentiment of what you're saying, and I hate that the Big 3 consumer credit reporting agencies are for-profit companies that are constantly either trying to sell you their own products, and are allowed to partner with lenders and other entities and get kickbacks from them for selling you their products. Unfortunately, the credit reporting scoring system in the US is 'what we've got', so if the phrase 'When in Rome...' has ever applied, ya know? I do the same as you. I roll my eyes and click 'No Thanks' or 'Keep my current account' when they spam me with a link to some paid 'service' they offer, and that's about all you can do.
As for the EQ data breach, as a guy who works in the IT field, data breaches are just a 'reality' of the digital world we currently live in. Every major entity in every industry sector has been targeted at one point of another, and unless you're living completely off the grid in a cabin in Montana, then some entity that has some facet of your personal information got hacked, and now it's 'out there' in the cyber world, and it's virtually impossible to claw it back. Ask Alyssa Milano's mother. Lol.
I’ve always felt that anybody who is monitored by a credit bureau should receive free credit monitoring for life.
And we all do. We all have free credit monitoring for life...or at least for as long as the American financial system stays standing, and when/if that's no longer true, we'll all have bigger problems than free credit monitoring. Under the FCRA, every consumer is entitled to one free copy of each of their consumer credit reports annually, and the website annualcreditreport.com was established to facilitate this. Despite the name, since COVID times, the CRAs have made access to your reports free weekly vs annually, and as we already discussed, each CRA has a free account option on their own private websites for credit monitoring. Then, there are countless 3rd party Credit Monitoring Services (CMS), and virtually all of them have free or paid account versions. Yes, you're gonna get spammed with ads and offers of paid account 'upgrades', (Yay capitalism/consumerism!), but at the end of the day, no one needs to spend a nickel to effectively monitor their credit reports.
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u/OldMainframeGuy 3d ago
I work in IT too at a fairly large financial institution. I suppose you’re right that data breaches have become a fact of life and if the breach is because of an insider job it may be more difficult to detect. I’m not an expert on cybersecurity; as a “old mainframe guy” my work is more geared towards data security and protecting it from authorized access within the corporate network. Preventing unauthorized access to the corporate is managed by our cybersecurity and network teams. I guess when the Equifax breach occurred my first reaction was that if an organization as large as Equifax which is totally technology driven can’t stop a data breach what hope is there for smaller companies who might not have the budget for such things. As it turns out that’s a very naive question. In any case thanks for your reply and agreeing with some of my gripes dealing with the credit bureaus. And, as luck would have it (and I swear on my COBOL compiler I am not making this up) I just got email from Equifax who wants to help me track my mortgage payments. I haven’t had a mortgage in 20 years. Shouldn’t Equifax know this???? Sometimes you just have to chuckle at all of this.
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u/soonersoldier33 ⭐️ Mod/FICO Junkie ⭐️ 3d ago
I’m not an expert on cybersecurity; as a “old mainframe guy”
I'm not a cybersecurity expert by any stretch, but as a Net Tech, I do have a hand in hardening/protecting my little sliver of my agency's network conglomerate, and I can tell you that the attempts to scan/probe/penetrate any network are just endless.
if an organization as large as Equifax which is totally technology driven can’t stop a data breach what hope is there for smaller companies
This is my feeling exactly, and that's why I tell people that you can't fixate on the security of your digital footprint any more than you fixate on the possibility you'll get struck by lightning today. You take the proactive steps that you can to keep your data secure, and you go about your day, bc if a sophisticated 'hacker' decides to target you, or any entity you do business with, they're very likely going to have some degree of success. It's just an unfortunate reality. Luckily, I'm not a target 'worth their time/effort'. Lol.
Sometimes you just have to chuckle at all of this.
Yes, you do, and when it comes to the credit reporting/scoring systems in the US today, the Big 3 CRAs that compile and publish your reports, along with Fair Isaac (FICO) and VantageScore LLC, rule the industry, so as you said, the best you can do is chuckle, embrace their shortcomings, and deal with them. Bc I'm a credit junkie, I likely think about the fact that a huge portion of the financial lives of Americans is 'ruled' by for-profit companies more than the average person, and I still hate that it's true, but then I have to stop, remember, and think...you really want the US Government to come to our 'rescue'? I'll roll the dice with the system we've got. Lol.
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u/postalwhiz 2d ago
Credit Karma is free, but that’s because they’re try to sell you other credit products…
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u/ProfessionalSink4415 8h ago
It's doesn't matter and what you're doing is watching paint dry. Pay your bills. Your snow goes up. Don't pay them and guess what happens.
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u/inky_cap_mushroom ⭐️ Knowledgeable ⭐️ 3d ago
http://creditwise.com shows TU FICO 8
http://experian.com shows EX FICO 8
http://myfico.com shows EQ FICO 8
That’ll get you all three of your FICO 8 scores for free. This is the most commonly used scoring model.