They say that sex sells, but when it comes to sales techniques, sex has nothing on fear. Huge swaths of our economy operate entirely on scaring people into giving up their money. And the worst part? A lot of the time their product is worthless.

6 FreeCreditReport.com

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The Paranoia:

Quick question: How many times today has somebody asked you what your credit score is? Well, you're currently on the Internet, so it's probably somewhere around 400, usually by ads with sliding bars on them. We admit, your credit score determines some rather important factors in your life, such as how easily you can get a loan, or buy a house, or if that cute girl in the pop-up ad will go out with you.



She won't.

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The Pitch:

According to FreeCreditReport.com, it's even worse than that: the ads say if you have a bad credit report, you'll wind up working in a seafood restaurant somehow. Even if it's due to "some hacker" stealing your identity. They're not the only website offering to give you your credit score, but FreeCreditReport.com is by far the most famous, maybe because of the way they carpet bomb the airwaves with an annoying jingle about how screwed you will be if you don't visit their website:

Holy shit, your whole career down the toilet, just because you didn't have the basic business skills to know a deal when you see one! Here's another one from them saying identity theft can keep you from ever owning a car, here's another one threatening you'll wind up working as a waiter if you don't subscribe to their service. On top of the fact that they're using goofy jingles to cover for a ludicrous threat, if you work in the food service industry these ads must royally piss you off. They threaten people that if they don't sign up for their service, they'll wind up like you.

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Otherwise, they're pretty up front about what they do, right? Hell, it's right in the name? You head to their website and see your credit score for free. If it's good, then awesome; if it's bad, then... well, they're actually not very clear on what you're supposed to do then, but at least you know, right? And it didn't cost you a dime!

The Problem:

If you go to FreeCreditReport.com expecting a free credit report, you're in for a rather big surprise. What you're actually getting is a free seven-day trial for a credit monitoring service, which they're more than happy to renew automatically, at a rate of $14.95 a month. Not only that, but they're only sponsored (read: operated) by one of the three credit monitoring bureaus, Experian, so it's more or less impossible to get any complete credit information from them no matter what you do.