Credit Reports

One of the scariest things about identity theft is that you could be a victim and not even know it. In this feature, we list four red flags that can signal that you are a victim of identity theft. Click forward to see how you can know if your credit is compromised.

Credit and debt expert Lita Epstein knows people are worried about debt these days and are getting a lot of conflicting information. So she offers a primer on credit scores that will sort through the bad advice and help you keep your report clean.

It may seem like an age-old trick now, but credit card "shaving" is still going on, and you could be at risk. Tom Barlow clues you in on the process by which thieves actually shave numbers off old credit cards to create bogus new ones, and get away with stealing your money.

There's no magic bullet to clean up a troubled credit report, say Ken and Daria Dolan. The bad reports stay on there for seven years. But there are a lot of things you can do to make yourself look better until your time is up.

Debt consolidation might sound like a great idea, but many people don't have the self-discipline to stop using the credit cards that got them in trouble in the first place.

Before the advent of "instant" mortgage approvals and automated underwriting systems, loans were actually evaluated completely by a living, breathing human being: an underwriter.

You may know the basics about your credit score, but there's more to it than just paying your bills on time. Ken and Daria Dolan take you behind the hidden tricks of credit reporting so you can keep you score high.