Archives for August 2015

This post provides updated information and instructions regarding the free FICO score that is available to American Express credit card holders.

Background. In late 2014, American Express started piloting free FICO scores to select cardholders. In late August 2015, American Express has rolled out the free FICO scores much more widely. See additional information below. In previous years, AmEx cardholders could view their Experian PLUS credit score and credit report once every 12 months.

FICO Score details.

• FICO Score version: FICO Score 8, or FICO 08. This is the most widely used of the many FICO flavors. Score version is directly shown on the website.
• Credit bureau: Experian
• Update frequency: Monthly
• Limitations: Available to all American Express consumer credit and charge cards. See details below.

How to find the score. You can find the score after logging into your online account access. In order to see it, you must be viewing the American Express website in its “new” design layout (see screenshots below). If you are still on the “old” layout, try to unlink any cards for which you are the authorized user. In many cases, this will let you revert to the new design layout. Here are some screenshots.

Look for the “My Free FICO Score” link on your sidebar (click to enlarge):

You will have to opt-in:

Here’s what your score report looks like (click to enlarge):

Fine print:

The FICO® Score we provide is the FICO® Score 8 based on data from Experian and may be different from other credit scores. FICO® Scores and educational content are delivered only to Primary card members who get a monthly statement and have an available score. This information is intended only for the Primary card members own review purposes. American Express and other lenders may use different inputs like a FICO® Score, other credit scores and more information in credit decisions. Because it is continuously updated, your FICO® Score may not reflect the most current data on your credit report. This benefit may change or end in the future.

Every week it seems there is a new way to get a free FICO score. Over the last 10 years, I’m pretty sure I’ve only paid for a FICO score once when I was paranoid about my first mortgage application. Why aren’t they charging us $15 a pop anymore? My opinion is that FICO realized that:

1. If they didn’t start making FICO scores more accessible, the government would force them offer free FICO scores to everyone like they did with free annual credit reports. Nowadays, I think we take for granted that we get a free credit report every year. Before the 2003 FACT Act, we had to pay to view our own credit report data.
2. The alternative free credit score providers were getting very cozy directly with the credit bureaus, and their free FAKO scores and partial reports were getting good enough and popular enough that people might stop caring about FICO scores if they didn’t start marketing directly to consumers. Nowadays the FICO brand has much more publicity.

Anyhow, I was doings some research on their website when I noticed that they provided the following chart about the various versions of FICO:

While these flavors have been around for a long time, they’ve only been well-known to industry insiders (and credit card afficionados). I had never seen FICO actually share all of these versions in the name of “consumer education”. If people actually knew there were so many different credit score flavors, they would have been less willing to pay big bucks for a single score that their lender may not even use. I guess now the game is that you get a single free “vanilla” FICO score from select credit cards, but you can buy all 19 FICO flavors for a $60 one-time snapshot from all 3 bureaus, or $30 a month for an ongoing subscription. If you get all these scores, you’re at least likely to see what the lender sees. Nicely done.

My own scores always hover in the upper 700s but rarely goes far above 800 because I am constantly “using” them to try out new credit card perks and take advantage of attractive sign-up bonuses. There is definitely a happy range where I can do this while not experiencing any ill effects like a higher auto insurance premium. However, I still don’t see the need to pay $360 a year to track my FICO scores. I’d rather spend my money at Baskin Robbins and pick from their 31 delicious flavors.

The New York Times has come out with another neat interactive tool that provides a sobering count of both how many and what types of your personal information has been exposed to hackers. I like that they break things down as exposing your e-mail address is very different than your Social Security Number.

Half of American adults had their personal information exposed to hackers last year alone. In a recent attack at the federal Office of Personnel Management, hackers stole the most sensitive personal data for 21.5 million people.

I took the quiz and here are my results:

All in all, I would say it could be worse. My credit and debit cards all have “zero fraud liability” and I carefully go through each statement every month. The scariest part is that the worst data breaches will probably occur where you couldn’t do anything about it. For example, the recent governmental database breach involved every single person given a government background check for the last 15 years. That hack exposed Social Security Numbers, financial histories, employment records, and fingerprints.

The advice that the NYT gives is to make sure you have different passwords for every website, and to turn on two-factor authentication whenever possible. As I’ve noted, I use 1Password and I definitely love the feature set but admit it is somewhat expensive. All my accounts now have passwords that look like “j6VQDqa$oE2zYa” and I can access them with a thumbprint on my iPhone. The website TwoFactorAuth.org is a useful database of which sites offer two-factor authentication (2FA). There are still many financial sites that don’t support 2FA.