I read a terrific article in Newsweek a week or two ago about identity theft, and concluded that in the interest of being safe, not sorry, it was time for me to get more proactive with monitoring our credit reports and credit information. My first step: get an up-to-date credit report.

And thence into the dark tunnel of credit reporting agencies. There are three big companies in this space, Experian, Equifax and Transunion. But there are also dozens, if not hundreds of third party companies that can generate and track your credit report too.

Which leads to the obvious question: which one to choose?

Actually, my first step was to remember that there’s a law now that lets everyone in the U.S. get a free credit report from all three agencies every 12 months. You can apply for one yourself at Annual Credit Report.com, so I did just that…