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LAST UPDATED: March 19th, 2021

Equifax is the oldest of the three major credit bureaus. This review explores its credit monitoring and reporting products, along with their features and drawbacks.

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The Good

  • Lots of Options
  • Mobile App
  • Educational Content
  • Triple-Bureau Reporting
  • FICO Scores

Lots of Options

Equifax offers a large number of options for customers looking to manage and monitor their credit, including both subscription-based credit monitoring, à la carte credit reports from all three bureaus, family plans, and the like. With all of these options, chances are high that one will find a plan that provides the features they're looking for. Of particular note is the family credit monitoring plan, which offers significant savings for those looking to cover their spouse and children.

Mobile App

Equifax offers both smartphone and tablet apps for mobile users to help them stay aware of changes to their credit and ID protection alerts.

Educational Content

Equifax has a considerable number of educational pieces on its site which are useful for customers seeking to better understand consumer credit.

Triple-Bureau Reporting

Equifax offers credit scores and reports from itself, as well as the two other major credit bureaus-Experian and TransUnion.

FICO Scores

Equifax uses the FICO scoring model to report credit. This is the same model used by the vast majority of lenders, so customers can be confident that they are looking at the same scores that potential creditors will see.

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The Bad

  • Refresh Rate
  • Security Issues

Refresh Rate

Unfortunately, Equifax only refreshes credit scores and reports twice per year. A lot can happen to an individual's credit during six months, so it's frustrating that customers will not be able to view their actual credit information in real-time.

Security Issues

In 2013, Equifax, along with the other credit bureaus, confirmed that it was hacked and financial data for many high profile individuals was stolen. Then in 2015, Equifax admitted that it may have exposed personal customer information by accident. This may make potential customers question the security of the personal information that they share with the company.

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The Bottom Line

Equifax offers several plan options, a mobile app, educational content, triple-bureau reports, and FICO scores. However, the company's refresh rate is poor and security issues have occurred in the past.

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4 Reviews

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Eddie Rios Ogden, UT

Equifax has a superb credit monitering service. It catches unsolicited or unauthorized activity on your financial tools. It monitors for identity theft and alerts of any suspicious activity. I like that it is directly linked to the actual credit bureau which gives this service much credibility.

4 years ago

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Anonymous

Not a bad platform also quite easy to use. As a landlord it comes in handy to have one of the few under your belt. Quite accurate at least on what I own.

4 years ago

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Eric San Diego, CA

While I prefer suing Eperian, Equifax gets the job done as well. I would always recommend pulling through all three reporting agencies for an accurate assessment.

5 years ago

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Justin McMurtrey South Jordan, UT

Equifax used to be the Gold standard but I think they have moved to the least trusted of the three major credit scores companies since their data breach.

4 years ago