Free credit monitoring for pretty much anyone!

If you have had a loan, credit card or any other type of credit line in the past 21 years, TransUnion is offering up to 9 months of credit monitoring services as part of a class action lawsuit settlement. You can opt for the basic service which includes 6 months of credit monitoring as well as unlimited access to your credit report and TransUnion credit score. This option allows you to still receive some form of cash from the settlement. If you don't care about the cash portion you can opt for the enhanced service which nets you 9 months of monitoring and a mortgage simulator to help you see what your mortgage rate would be as well as access to your insurance scores.

The credit monitoring service offered by TransUnion provides 24 hour monitoring and email notification of major changes. A credit expert notes that all consumers can benefit from a free credit monitoring service and that TransUnion's credit monitoring is top notch. Experts are less impressed by the mortgage simulator and the offer of a TransUnion score because the number isn't your real FICO score and less than 5%of banks use the TransUnion number. While it isn't the same number the TransUnion score is usually within 40-50 points of your FICO score and may at least alert you if your score is drastically lower than it should be.

While I think this is a good deal for a free service that may prove useful, it's sad that it is only coming about due to a lost lawsuit based on TransUnion's greed. You see back before 2001, TransUnion was selling customer information to marketing lists and others. That's right this credit monitoring is just a way of saying sorry, even though we didn't do anything wrong, for all of that junk mail you used to receive!

You can visit www.listclassaction.com to sign up for your benefits, which you can activate after the court accepts the settlement.