- Defend your personal data — Account numbers, social Security number, and personal identification number codes.
- Destroy all files incorporating account numbers of additional personal data.
- Examine the bank and credit card reports every month — find charges you did not make.
- Obtain a costless duplicate of your credit statement every year from those big 3 credit agencies — find accounts you did not open.
Here is what I do. I obtain my statement from one of the agencies every four months — that way I am ascertaining my file end-to-end the entire year, instead of all together. To obtain a costless duplicate of your credit report, work with this web site: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ It was established by the federal authorities for this particular aim.
The actual fact is, ending an open account will not rise your credit score and will reduce it. However if you got a high credit score and merely close one account — the effect on your credit score can be comparatively modest.
Even so, you did not say the reason why you prefer to close the account. Perhaps there is an economical drawback to maintaining it open, like the yearly charge or a cosignatory who could run-up one balance. Perhaps you just prefer to decrease your chance of identity theft. Or perhaps you assume, as most people do, that ending earlier accounts will hike up the credit score.
As a matter of fact, the opposite is true, and ending your earliest account might in reality have damaging outcomes as it makes the credit history seem to be shorter.