Is there an efficient way to monitor my identity

Question

Without _paying_ the credit companies/3rd parties/middle man.

starwind · Accepted Answer

Yes. Most credit card companies will offer credit monitoring as a service to their customers--usually the TransUnion and Experian reports—-and you can get push notifications when someone pulls your credit. If you don't have a credit card, you can sign up for CapOne's CreditWise.
This helped me avoid a bad situation where someone took out of a covid relief sba loan in my name for $99,500. Got the push notification, called the sba, sat on hold for 2 hours. They stopped it.
If you don't want to freeze your credit, you can put fraud alerts in place for one year so a lender is supposed to call you and speak with you on the phone before putting any applications through. I've had a mixed experience with this

melissalobos · Answer

If you just want your credit report the official site is (https://www.annualcreditreport.com/) which looks fishy but is real (https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports). I am not aware of any more authoritative source or any API.
>Only one website — AnnualCreditReport.com — is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law.
From the FTC page

thesuperbigfrog · Answer

Put credit freezes in place:https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-credit...It is free and will stop anyone from opening new lines of credit in your name.