Free credit report – Is it really free?

The question of “Is a so-called free credit report really free?” has been asked so many times that the United States federal government finally did something that gives every single American adult the legal right to obtain a copy of the credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) once a year through a law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act or FCRA. The U.S. is not the only country to do this though.