There’s a big myth among college students that they don’t need to be aware of their credit history until after they graduate. Even if a student has never taken out cash advances, a credit card, or even a loan, it’s still an important practice to get a credit report drawn each year. The reason for that is simple. The very reason they think they don’t need it is why their identities are coveted by identity thieves. They basically have a clean credit report and thieves know they aren’t paying much attention to what’s going on in their credit history.

It Can Happen Close to Home

The other reason is that college students are very vulnerable to identity theft from relatives and people in their immediate family. Anyone who has access to their personal information can take out a credit card in their name and use it fraudulently for personal purchases. It might even be a credit card that lands on their credit history, it can be the phone or utility bill that somehow is now in their name. If these bills go unpaid, their credit score drops like a rock. Without monitoring their credit, it may not be noticeable until years later when they try to buy a car or a home and the incident pops up.

Protect Your Credit Score

The best way to protect yourself from identity theft is to by identity theft protection. These services are very inexpensive and can help you maintain a good credit profile without much supervision. In addition, you can also get free credit reports from the three major credit bureaus annually. That will help a student to keep them focused on their studies, while the service keeps track of their credit history. Should something suspicious happen, the student is alerted right away and this can help them save their credit history for when they really need it later.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 1st, 2010 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.