Consumers might be better off seeking credit reports via phone or...

aggressively trying to misdirect -- if not deceive -- visitors, officials said. In Feb., WPF documented 96 known imposter credit report domains. Now it tallies 233, of which 112 are active and online - a 124% rise since WPF’s last report. One imposter site lacked the period between “www” and “annual.” The site, “wwwannualcreditreport.com,” now taken offline, requested visitors’ Social Security numbers and, according to its privacy policy, was sharing them with car dealers. Another scam site was sending consumers directly to commercial data broker Intelius. A 3rd gathered consumers’ e-mail addresses to share as “fresh, real-time, Internet mortgage leads” for mortgage and debt consolidation loan pitches, WPF said. Some news is good. The credit bureaus now let news media and consumer groups link to the official credit report site, which should minimize the frequency with which visitors land on typo domains, WPF Exec. Dir. Pam Dixon said. TransUnion also has stopped pre-selecting consumers to receive marketing materials via a small checkbox at the bottom of its registration page. But Dixon said she fears imposter sites are showing up in search engine results, sometimes as paid listings ranked ahead official sites. She urged credit bureaus and the FTC to act immediately to “clean up all of the imposter domains” before a Sept. 1 rollout of free credit reports to consumers in Conn., Del., Me., Md., Mass., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Pa., R.I., Vt., Va., W.Va., D.C. and P.R. as well as all U.S. territories.