How to get Free Credit Scores

How to get Free Credit Scores:

Just after midnight on August 5th I got an email from, what appeared to be, 
Bank of America telling me that there was a problem with my account - that
some transactions had been flagged and that I needed to investigate them.

I get these notifications from time-to-time but they're usually accompanied
by a phone call - that did not occur in this case. Of course, I also get
similar emails form phishers, I was quite skeptical. But not wanting to
be affected by the real case I logged into Bank of America (never click
the links in the email, never copy-paste the URLs - always type in fresh)
and saw no alerts waiting for me. I was quite confused - either this was
in error or it was a phishing attempt.

I returned to the email and noticed it provided a number. I dialed in and
while I navigated the menus (sounding quite legitimate) I searched online
to see if the phone number was a genuine number, or not. I found a number
of pages, written by concerned individuals, who were certain that the
number was run by phishers and that their identity was already stolen. It
was at this point in the phone call that they asked me to provide my 16-
digit account number. I immediately hung up.

Fast-forward to the next day. I'm flying across the country and I get a
voicemail. I check it and it's the last 2/3rds of an automated message
telling me that there were some bad transactions with my Bank of America
account. I figured, at this point, there were one of two things going on:
 1) The phishers saved my phone number and were now calling back (the
    number was listed as being 'Unknown').
 2) This actually was Bank of America calling and something bad was
    happening to my account.

Once I made it back on the ground, and to a computer, I logged into Bank
of America - to find an actual alert waiting for me. I called the phone
number that they provided and talked with a representative. Apparently
they had been notified, by a third party, that my debit card number was
found and that they were immediately closing my existing debit card and
were issuing me a new one. I was fine with this - a reasonable course of
action. They also recommended that I go back through my transactions to
see if I could spot any that looked suspicious. However they could not
give me a start date for when this theft may have occurred - only that
it had.

After this I decided that it was about time that I investigate my credit
status more. I signed up for my free, annual, credit report that the
government mandates (annualcreditreport.com) and started to poke around.
Nothing was out of the ordinary, which was good. No credit score is
provided, which is a bit of a downer.

The next day I check my mail to find a letter from Wells Fargo. Puzzled,
I opened it. I had tried to use them last year for an international
transaction but, ultimately, was unable to. They were writing to notify
me that:
  "a third party data provider had notified us that a Well Fargo
   access code was used to gain unauthorized access to your
   personal information."

So now we know where the leak came from. But it continues:
  "This data may have included your name, address, date of birth
   social security number, driver's license number, and credit
   account information."

I'm not concerned about the first three points - anyone can find those.
And the credit account is obvious (since Bank of America contacted me).
But the SSN and Driver's license parts worry me - I don't remember ever
providing that information to Wells Fargo, but I will have to call them
to find out for sure. Hopefully they will be able to give me a date for
the exact breach, as well.

Wells Fargo provided me with a free account
 "IDENTITY GUARD(R) CREDITPROTECTX3(SM)"
account - which is something that I've been meaning to do for a while
(get some sort of identity monitoring set up).

On the plus side this service provides me with my credit scores. Huzzah
for free credit scores!

----

Just want to mention: As far as I know my debit card wasn't used
maliciously, at all. It was just found "in the wild" and was reported as
such. I am, however, worried about my Social Security Number being
widely available. I'd like to avoid that whenever possible.