Knowing Your Credit Score Monitoring your credit score is very important for protecting your identity and ensuring your buying power. By knowing your credit score, you're protecting yourself against identity thieves as well as unauthorized charges & missed payments. Having a good credit score is essential to your ability to buy a home, a car or get a business loan. You can protect yourself by obtaining a Free Credit Report & Free Credit Repair Tools. Identity Theft Identity Theft occurs when an unauthorized person gets a hold of your payment information(your credit card information as well as personal billing information). Generally, identity thieves use this valuable information to buy things on your account and they usually pound the card through as many times as possible over & over again, because they're not sure how much is on it. Unauthorized Charges Unauthorized charges can occur from identity thieves or when companies who have your credit card info accidentally charge your account for a product or service you haven't purchased. Both identity theft & unauthorized charges can be protected against rather easily by setting up an account with a free credit reporting company that offers credit alerts just in case there's ever a problem.