【4/16 Update】A reader in DP said that even if you do not have an SSN, as long as you have a credit card or related credit data, you can check your credit report and an estimated credit score on Credit Sesame. The method is to fill in your personal information accurately and completely. The SSN can be filled in arbitrarily (such as all 0s), and then your identity can still be matched and your credit information pulled. For people without an SSN, this is very good news.

About Credit Sesame

Credit Sesame is a website that provides advice and assistance for personal finance. It offers free credit reports, a credit score, and alerts when changes happen on your credit report. It also recommends credit cards and new loans based on your credit cards, loans, and payment information. In addition, it also provides free personal identity theft insurance worth $50,000. If you suffer losses due to identity theft caused by a data breach, you may receive compensation.

I personally use it mainly to monitor and review my credit report. If anything changes, I can check and handle it right away. It is still very convenient and effective to use. Most of the time I don’t even log in because email alerts are enough. As a free service, there are quite a lot of ads on the interface. As for the included identity theft insurance, it’s nice that it’s there.

Registration

Credit Sesame is a free site and you can register directly without providing a credit card—just verify that your SSN and identity match. After filling in your personal details, usually 3-5 identity-related verification questions (from public record) appear. Answer them truthfully. Some options may be incorrect, so in those cases you can simply choose “none of above.”

Basic features are generally free. Credit Sesame also offers some paid services, but I personally don’t think they are a great deal. Please read carefully and only buy what you truly need.

Feature Overview

Credit Sesame mainly uses TransUnion (TU) bureau data, so it only provides reports and alerts from that one bureau. From a full credit report perspective, the differences between using one bureau and all three are quite small. The only difference is that hard pulls may appear on one bureau or multiple bureaus, which can cause minor score differences. For basic data such as payment history, all three bureaus are the same. If there are delinquent items, all three bureaus will usually have them, so you don’t need to worry about not being able to track them.

Below I only introduced the features I find most useful. I won’t go through every feature, especially the less useful or paid ones.

Credit Report Monitoring

I think the most useful feature is credit report monitoring. You can find it at My Finances->My Monitoring->Credit Monitoring.

Credit Sesame tracks all changes on a TU credit report, including:

  • New cards opened and closed, or additional authorized cards added
  • Payment history
  • Credit score changes (more than 10)
  • Hardpull
  • Negative factors in the credit report, such as long-term delinquency or bankruptcy records
  • Personal information changes on the credit report, such as a new address or a change in employer

Overall, the most important credit-report changes can all be tracked in Credit Sesame, and you get an email alert every time. If something looks notable, you can log in and check. In daily use, it is very simple and convenient. This time, thanks to Credit Sesame’s alert, I was able to analyze and handle it promptly after my Chase card was closed.

Credit Score and Partial Credit Report

Besides credit report information, Credit Sesame also provides a credit score and partial credit report. This score is not the FICO score (which is typically calculated by all three bureaus); it is a score that Credit Sesame fits based on your credit report data. While the absolute score value has limited reference value, the trend is generally close to FICO. Sudden increases or drops both indicate meaningful changes in your credit report data. For someone who has just obtained an SSN, there is no need to be too concerned about this score, since this score depends mainly on your balance rather than all of your credit profile.

Credit Sesame also provides partial credit reports and some suggestions for how to improve your score. This is similar to the partial credit reports offered by many cards, such as Chase and Discover.

$50,000 Identity Insurance

This is what I’d call a unique feature of Credit Sesame. As long as you are a registered user, you can get a free personal identity theft insurance policy with a maximum payout of $50,000. The policy includes coverage for:

  • Fraud or Embezzlement：
  • Theft
  • Forgery
  • Data Breach
  • Stolen Identity Event

In short, losses caused by identity fraud, embezzlement, theft, data breaches, and similar incidents can be covered under this insurance. I don’t have personal experience with filing a claim. If you’re interested, you can review Credit Sesame’s PDF explanation:

Since this is a free add-on, taking it definitely won’t hurt—and you never know when you may need it.

Other Features

Credit Sesame will recommend loans that may be better for you based on your loans (loan), and also recommend credit cards based on your credit report. I am not very familiar with loans, so everyone should compare the rate and fees offered by other banks. For credit cards, most of what Credit Sesame recommends are fairly standard cards and not top-tier offers, so you can mostly ignore them.

Security

Credit Sesame founder Adrian Nazari is also a co-founder of Financial Crossing. Credit Sesame is also supported by two major VC firms, nventus Capital and Menlo Ventures. Also, based on the security details listed at the bottom of the site, I personally feel this site is relatively safe. After all, they offer a $50,000 personal identity theft insurance program; they can’t just fake it.

On the other hand, when we registered, we did not add a credit card, and did not provide online banking logins or any credit-card information. All data comes from TransUnion, so your credit card shouldn’t be randomly charged or stolen as a result. This is fairly secure.

Conclusion

Overall, I still highly recommend everyone register for Credit Sesame—for credit report monitoring, credit score and report lookups, and the free identity theft insurance. The other features, such as paid premium monitoring and card and loan recommendations, are not that important to me. Just choose the features you actually need.

Registration Link