Credit monitoring services will watch over your credit file with continuous around the clock tracking and notify you whenever there is a change to the credit file. These services will alert you within 24 hours of a change, usually through email, phone, or text message as you see fit.

Just because you settled with a car loan company after a car repossession, that doesn’t mean that they have to remove it from your Equifax, Experian or TransUnion reports.

Your credit score is just one of the factors your mortgage lender will use to determine whether you qualify for financing. The problem is, every lender uses different methods to determine your credit worthiness. So, in some cases, a minimum score is difficult to determine for conventional loans. In other cases, especially when loans are underwritten or insured by government organizations, there are minimum credit scores to qualify.

Credit scores influence nearly all things financial in your life. Banks, credit card companies and others use credit scores in deciding whether to give you a loan, how much money you can borrow and how much interest to charge you. Here’s some advice for improving your credit score:

Identity theft may be used to facilitate or fund other crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism, phishing and espionage. There are cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including online credit card processing and medical insurance. Sources such as the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center sub-divide identity theft into five categories.