Credit Sesame is a Website that helps people manage their credit — its offering users free credit monitoring, a service that the big three credit bureaus offer for a fee. However, Credit Sesame monitors information from a single credit bureau — Experian.

The information in your credit report determines in large part what kind of credit, from car loans to credit cards to mortgages, you’ll be able to get. Federal law gives you the right to know what consumer credit information is collected on you and you need to exercise that right.

Anyone who has recently applied for a mortgage knows that lenders are already looking much more closely at your financial affairs. But soon, they’ll be able to easily delve into the deepest recesses of your financial life, accessing information that never before appeared on your credit report.

Start by doing a credit checkup — you can monitor your credit yourself by requesting a free report once a year from each of the credit bureaus through www.annualcreditreport.com but the free report won’t include your credit score, you’ll pay about $8 to get the credit bureau’s proprietary number.

Any company, organization, or individual with a “legitimate business need” can request to see your credit history, and these requests are known as credit inquiries. They are divided into two categories called hard and soft inquiries — hard inquiries will affect your credit history and credit score while soft inquiries will not.