Well there's two ways, the easy way and the hard way. In the easy way, you simply go to annualcreditreport.com and check out your free credit report from all of the bureaus. Look through your credit history. If there's anything amiss, there should be a link next to it or on the page to file a dispute. As long as the creditor doesn't disagree, the error is gone within 3 months. And if that doesn't work, there's the hard way, where you have to keep detailed documentation as you go between bureaur and furnisher, pressing your case. In the worst case, you may have to go to trial to get an error removed.

For a good look at each step of how the hard way works, check out "How to complain about: credit report errors" over at The Red Tape Chronicles.

How to complain about: credit report errors [Red Tape Chronicles]

• Cancel your account with the credit report site immediately. They won't let you do this online, so you'll have to call an 800 number to cancel. They'll try to talk you out of canceling. Stand firm.
• Watch your credit card statements carefully. Some of the "free credit report" services are owned by companies notorious for slipping unauthorized charges onto your bill. Watch your statements, and pounce on those bogus charges like a kitten on a dust bunny. Dispute them, or file a chargeback if necessary.
• Your personal data is probably safe, but just in case, keep an eye on your credit report. Use AnnualCreditReport.com. I like to order a report from a different credit bureau every four months, so it remains free, but I have a broad sense of what's getting reported over time. The scammers aren't out to steal your identity. They're out to collect affiliate fees for selling you a not-so-free credit report.
• Remember, you're not stupid. Credit checks are a common part of the rental process, so don't feel stupid for not being suspicious at first.

RELATED:
Scammers Advertise Fake Apartments, Want Your Real Credit Information
Easy Weight Loss And Free Cash: A Dubious Product Online Marketing Empire Revealed
Don't Fall For The Job Hunting Credit Report Scam

(Photo: brendancox)

Meet Just THINK Media of Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada, and their online empire of dubious products. Magic weight loss tea, free government grants, acai and red wine pills, colon cleanser, free credit reports...if there are incessant ads for it everywhere on the Web, they probably sell it.

Here's how this all started. Last week, we published a story about apartment rental credit report scams that prey on innocent people searching for housing online. Quick summary: Scammers advertise nonexistent apartments, then tell prospective renters to go to a Web site for a purportedly free credit report, and pocket affiliate fees in the process.

Alert reader Phil looked up one of the credit report sites, CreditReport America, to let them know that an affiliate was generating business dishonestly. How seriously do they take the situation? His e-mail bounced. Not a temporary ISP outage bounce, either—the address abuse@creditreportamerica.com doesn't even have a mailbox. It's a breach of pretty basic protocol to not have an abuse@ email address set up for your site.

Phil found the address on the company's advertising practices and FTC compliance page, which doesn't explicitly forbid using fake real estate ads to earn affiliate fees. It does forbid spamming, so there's that, and the apartment ads thing is probably unforeseen from the company's point of view.

What's funny, though, is the last paragraph on that page:

Recommendation Handling
Proper advertising practice is at the top of our priority list, and we are therefore open to further improving our practices as reasonably requested by any one. All recommendations are taken very seriously, and are promptly reviewed by our advertising and legal department.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, and/or any other issues regarding our advertising practices we urge you to forward them to abuse@creditreportamerica.com for an immediate review.

Immediate review, yeah.

I noticed something interesting on the advertising practices page, though. The sample page showing their amazing reader-tracking technology isn't the CreditReport America site. It shows an acai diet page—specifically, Acai Burn. Looking up domain registrations for CreditReport America and Acai Burn led me to Just THINK Media.

They have a very slick Web page, in Flash. According to their site, they are "quickly becoming the leader in online direct sales," and have generated hundreds of millions of Google Adwords leads. Let's peruse their products.

Wu-Yi Source
This is apparently their "flagship" product. The page doesn't sell tea so much as the idea of thinness and the possibility of effortless weight loss. They're a popular target on Ripoff Report, with 251 reports against them. The site has a bonus Asian dude giving a sales pitch in the corner. You know, because it's a well-kept Chinese weight loss secret. Customers allege that the tea is nothing special, but just has extra caffeine in it, and doesn't help with weight loss. Easy Weight Loss Tea is a similar site run by the same company.

Credit Report America
Yes, Credit Report America is based in Canada. Ha ha. We've already discussed at length on Consumerist why "free" credit report sites are bad. This is another one. Except that it has an old man in the corner who talks to you. Someone shut him up.

Government Funded Grants
Hey, it's that grandfatherly white guy from the credit report site! I remember him! This site charges you for information on how to get U.S. government grants. You know, like on that site grants.gov. The one that's free. Similar site: Gov Grants Direct.

The site's sales pitch even cites our parent publication, Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports magazine has reported that they literally hear "hundreds and hundreds" of reports of various government grant related scams throughout the year. Many of these scams seem obvious – and yet people still keep falling for them, time and time again.

Yes. Yes, they do.

Acai Burn
Effortless weight loss and bad Photoshopping? Sign me up. Similar to the Wu-Yi source site, and a pretty blond lady in a suit giving a sales pitch. We've been over this before. Don't fall for acai diet scams. Acai Burn Extreme is the same thing, but marketed to men. Maybe it contains barbecue sauce.

PureCleanse Pro
Colon cleanser. We've talked about this—you don't need to cleanse your colon unless a medical professional tells you to. Your body is set up to do that itself. This product is marketed as a weight loss aid, but there's a random embedded video about colon cancer in there, intended to imply that CBS news endorses colon cleansing pills.

Miracle Resveratrol
High-dose antioxidants derived from red wine. Or something. And some acai, too. Another "miracle" product to stop the aging process, help you lose weight, discipline your children, and balance your checkbook.

They also sell "Google cash kits" and home power plants, but I can't find those particular sites. I think we get the idea.

After all, the company's sites have a lot of common characteristics.

• They rely on affiliate marketing for sales—fake blogs, any way affiliates can get the links out there. High affiliate payouts are what led to the credit report scams featured here at Consumerist.
• The pages are very long. Too long, and repetitive. Lots of copy, lots of graphics, not enough disclaimers.
• The pages say "As seen on..." and show the logos of major media outlets. If you read the disclaimer, though, you learn that all this means is that the products have been advertised on those media outlets.
• Spokespeople appear on the pages and talk to you. They're actors from Live Face on Web.
• All operate on the free trial or inexpensive introductory item model, and depend on customers to cancel their subscriptions, memberships, what have you. Customers complain that their cards continue receiving unauthorized charges for months afterward.

It's not that Just THINK is trying to conceal their business model or that they own all of these sites. It's not hard to put the clues together. It's just fascinating to note the similarities between the sites, their pitches, and even their products. Sort of like window shopping in a strip mall where every store sells Amway.

My friend Amanda is looking for a new apartment, and last week she responded to an appealing ad on Craigslist. There was no apartment, though...just a credit report scam that's showing up in more and more cities.

Here's how the scam works. An ad goes up for a house or an apartment at an appealing rent. (See an example.) The ads don't change much from city to city, and are vague about where the place is located. The person who placed the ad e-mails prospective renters back with a rental application, a promise to walk them through the property soon, and a request for a copy of your credit report.

The demand for a credit report is the only part of this scam that's real. It's an affiliate link to one of the "free" credit report services. You know, like FreeCreditReport.com, only shadier and without the annoying TV commercials. The URL to the "free" credit report contains the scammer's affiliate code, and they receive money for every new customer referred to the credit report site.

Since the apartments often have suspiciously low rents for the area, the landlord scammer can just pretend that someone else was approved before you. Victims of the scam continue in their apartment hunts, never the wiser until strange charges for credit monitoring services show up on their credit card bill.

Here's an example of one of the e-mails. When my friend e-mailed the person offering the apartment asking where the place was located, she received this reply from George:

Hi,

We try to keep our costs and our tenants costs to a minimum so we can rent our units fast and keep them rented. Pets are accepted if you have any.

Hopefully I can walk you through the property either tomorrow or within the next few days.

Once you have these completed the steps below, send me an email. This really is a very nice rental especially for the price. Wont last long at this price.

Here is our Rental Application: Here
Print it out and bring it with you when we look at the property.

You'll need a copy of your credit report. Your report is free with a free trial. This will save me from charging you any fees for checking your credit history. Get it at http://www.rentalinvestors.net/freecreditreport.html

Regards,
George
Rental Investors

"Wont last long at this price," indeed.

She replied to him, again asking where the apartment was located—which, after all, was the only thing she asked in her initial e-mail. He never responded.

We reported on a very similar employment ad scam back in February. Apparently, people become suspicious when a prospective employer asks for a credit check before the interview, but a credit check as part of a rental application is much more plausible.

Many Consumerist readers have spotted this scam, and some have gone through with the credit checks. If you're one of them, carefully watch your credit card statements, dispute any charges you never asked for, and be sure to get a real free credit report from Annualcreditreport.com every year.

Here's a partial list of sham real estate companies, and the credit report companies they're sending business to. If you've run into similar ads, send us an e-mail with the fake company's information, and we'll add it to the list.

Landlords:
Equal Opportunity Rentals - equalopportunityrentals.com
Rental Investors - rentalinvestors.net
Katie's Rentals - katiesrentals.com
Metro Apartments - metroapartments.org
Anna's Rental Properties annasrentalproperties.com
Reed Apartments - reedapartments.org - marissa@reedapartments.org
ZT Apartments - zt_apts@earthlink.net
http://www.creditgradegroup.com - wayne.morrison20@gmail.com
Derek Couture - dcouture1977@gmail.com
Exquisite Rentals - exquisiterentals.com - ExquisiteRentals@mail.com
Kimberly McReynolds - kimberlymcreynolds2@gmail.com

Credit check services;
http://www.my-credit-score-now.com
http://www.creditreportamerica.com (See their BBB report and previous Consumerist appearance.)
http://www.gofreecredit.com
http://creditreporteveryone.com
http://creditreportprocessor.com
http://check-your-credit-online.com
http://CreditScoreDeluxe.com
http://www.icredit-scores.com

RELATED:
"Help, I Fell For The Apartment Rental Credit Check Scam!"
Consumer 101: Get Your Free Credit Report From "Annual Credit Report.com"
Beware Of Apartment Scammers
Don't Fall For The Job Hunting Credit Report Scam

(Photo: cincyproject)

Jose says:

I'm just writing you because I am so angry with freecreditreport.com. I wanted to check my credit report last month just to see where I stand so after watching the commercial, I used freecreditreport.com.

I am aware that, by law, your allowed one free credit report per year from each of the three credit unions. After I got my credit score I checked my BofA account and saw there was a $14.95 charge. I thought it was just a deposit and that it'll be refunded.

I completely forgot about it and today, a month after I checked my score there is another $14.95 charge. I call freecreditreport.com to see whats wrong and they tell me I have to cancel my membership and the $14.95 charge will not be refunded. I get super upset and then they just hang up on me without trying to give me an explanation. The moral of the story is they are a scam and I would like to let you know that so other people don't fall for the same thing I did.

Thanks, Jose. You might want to call Bank of America and explain the situation to them and see if they'll reverse the charge. You're not the only one who has fallen for the scruffy singing loser and his factually inaccurate songs. They have a big advertising budget, and we are just one little blog trying to explain federal law.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the website set up by the credit bureaus in order to comply with a federal law that entitles you to one free credit report each year — hence the name "annual credit report."

Don't been fooled by other sites. They want to sell you a trial subscription to some credit monitoring service that you probably don't need.

[Annual Credit Report.com]

Don't fall for these commercials. Get your real "free credit report" at www.annualcreditreport.com.

As for the dumbass with the guitar living in his in-law's basement for no reason, Bankrate has some advice:

The issue right now, however, is not how the two of you will share a theoretical debt, but whether his good credit can "catch cold" from your bad credit.

In short, the answer is no. Each of you has a separate history with the credit bureaus and, therefore, a separate credit score. At the same time, if your husband doesn't help you establish good credit he could suffer as a result. For example, if he does not have sufficient income by himself to purchase a home, he will need you to co-sign in order to qualify for a mortgage. Your income and your credit score may be crucial in qualifying for a lower rate — or even getting the mortgage at all.

In marriage, good credit can heal bad [Bankrate]
FLORIDA AG INVESTIGATES FREECREDITREPORT.COM [Red Tape Chronicles]

"I'm a 60 year old woman. Every time FreeCreditReport is advertised on TV I wonder why no government agency is protecting the public from false advertising.

Our generation knows what the words "freedom" and "free" mean. Every time this false advertising ad comes on, it taints words which we doddering elderly hold dear.

This is clearly blatant, false advertising. I want to raise my cane and strike the TV. To be allowed to incorporate the word "Free" into a business title is misleading unless the product is, indeed, free.

Since it seems that no government agency considers this a major concern of theirs, I pass this objection on to you.

Perhaps you have an idea as to how the skids can be put on this company and any aspiring others without exhausting and time-consuming paperwork. It's likely a violation of some government law.

-A citizen"

We hate freecreditreport.com and its ilk. The only place to get a credit report for free, for reals, is annualcreditreport.com.

You can file your false advertising complaint with the FTC. Though, we suspect striking the tv with your cane would be more satisfying.