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iBankBonus has compiled a list of bank bonuses. The list is particularly helpful, because you can view bonuses available by state, as well as see a brief overview of the terms of the bonus. I tend to sort by bank bonus value.

Some terms include:

• Initiate ACH transfers
• Set up recurring payments
• Set up direct deposit
• Complete forex transactions
• Account minimums

Just remember to take screen shots of all the confirmation pages, and offer pages so the banks don’t make a ‘mistake’ crediting your account with these bonuses.

All it takes for someone to identify you is 33 bits. 33 bits isn’t a magical number, it’s just that 2 to the power of 33 happens to be close to the number of people on the face of the planet. If you ask the right 33 yes or no questions about a person, one can identify a specific person anywhere – sometimes with far fewer questions. With all the traces of data you leave on websites such as facebook, twitter, etc it’s pretty easy to identify you, as well as your shopping habits, college major, favorite foods, income, address, how many children you have – and the list goes on.

IT should come as no surprise that companies are capitalizing on the breadcrumbs you leave behind while surfing the net. xplusone.com states they “serve the right message, to the right person, at the right time.”

What if this system of ultra-targeted advertising could be manipulated in your favor? It seems like the information you leave on the internet could be tweaked to show you in a better light.

If credit card companies are using where you shop to develop targeted credit card offers (like Capital One), it could be beneficial to pay cash at low end places like Wal-Mart, but to always pay with credit and tweet about your meals at expensive restaurants. Someone could possibly subscribe to golf and yachting magazines to boost their profile with high end retailers or creditors.

Next post: Credit cards and places to shop (or avoid) to boost your profile to merchants and lenders.

So, we all know that our online data is being used by companies to target advertisements with pinpoint precision. However, advertising is not the only use for data collected from your internet usage.

For instance, did you know that ordering pizza can affect your ability to obtain a mortgage? If a college grad is living with his or her parents while saving for a mortgage, while claiming apartment rent, data collected from online pizza delivery can determine where you live and tie that data with who actually owns the home. If someone is trying to refinance a home, but pizza is ordered to a home in another state, it becomes apparent that the home is not a primary residence.

Where you shop can also be used to identify those with disposable income. Targeted mailing, internet advertisements, etc can be directed based on the type of store credit cards you hold. A person with a Nordstrom’s card is perceived to have more income than someone with a TJMaxx credit card.

A recent blog post by a scientist with AVG suggests his facebook information was used by his bank to confirm his identity. He suggests the age of his daughter in law was used in a security question.

All of this seems a bit creepy. However, if you can get past being creeped out, there could be some fun ways to trick corporations into thinking you are more wealthy than you actually are. More on that later.

Transunion is charging to place a credit freeze on your file. The charges to add, lift, or remove a credit freeze vary by state and can be found here. Some states even have differing charges based on your age. Here’s an idea. Make them free…But if they were free, it would hurt TransUnion’s business model.  We wouldn’t want to hurt a credit reporting agency’s business model in an effort to help consumers against fraud, would we?

Okay, so this doesn’t improve your score directly, but there are benefits. Freezing your credit report with Experian will keep your Experian score from going down due to hard inquiries when applying for credit.

So, you want to apply for some credit cards, or otherwise initiate a bunch of hard pulls on your credit report, but are worried about the consequences of hard inquiries staying on your credit report or a dip on your FICO score. You already know about bumpage, accelerated bumpage, and choppage, so you’re not too worried about your Equifax or Transunion scores being hurt. What about your Experian score? (Remember, bumpage doesn’t work with Experian.) Just freeze your credit report with Experian. The hard pull that would otherwise be on Experian will likely redirected to a different credit reporting agency (CRA) – either Transunion or Equifax. The risk being run is that the institution trying to pull the Experian report will decide not to pull from a CRA, and a denial letter will be sent. I’m not too worried about getting denied credit – if my score stays in tact. Don’t forget, if you really want to, you can “thaw” your credit report temporarily, or remove the freeze altogether.

Clark Howard has a good guide on freezing your credit report with links to the various CRA’s websites. The cost is $3-$10 per bureau to freeze, and a cost to thaw per bureau of $0-$10.

As my daily spender, I use the Chase Freedom credit card. It earns me 3% on many of the things I buy most. Without warning, I received two shiny new cards in the mail stating now I have the Chase Exclusives Freedom card. Upon further investigation, I found there is almost no difference between my old chase freedom card and my new one…except the chase exclusives does not report a credit limit – which may hurt your FICO score.

Not all cardholders got the same deal. It seems because I had a Chase checking account, I received the exclusives card. Those that didn’t have a chase checking account got “upgraded” to a version of the card with an annual fee. If people were smart enough to use this card as their daily spender because it offered just about the best benefits around, they’re probably smart enough to change their card or cancel it all together before the annual fee is charged. They have a while to decide to keep the card, however. The annual fee is waived for the first year.

If you’re already using the ‘bumping‘ strategy of pulling your credit report regularly to eliminate hard inquiries, then you may have noticed this process takes a LONG time. It can take three months to see any results from pulling your credit report once a day.

Why not pull several times a day? All it takes is using multiple services to pull your credit score daily, and you can bump your hard inquiries in a fraction of the time. Here is a list of credit monitoring services that allow daily pulls:

• Service…………………………………………………..Pulls from………………………….Cost
• National City Identity Protect ………………..(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$9/month
• Credit Karma ………………………………………(Pulls Trans Union only)………..Free
• Privacy Matters 123 …………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)………………$30/year
• Truecredit ………………………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$15/month

This list is not comprehensive, and is subject to change, but you get the idea, for about $55, you can remove hard inquiries from your credit report in 30 days or less.  Again, this does not work with Experian, but does work with Trans Union and Equifax.

Viva la bumpage.

A few days ago, when I was talking about bumping hard inquiries off your credit report, I mentioned choppage. Choppage is when soft inquiries are cut off of your credit report (usually in a large block). The soft inquiries are good, because they fill the spaces of your hard inquiries. So, you can see why choppage can harm your efforts to bump hard inquiries.

Choppage typically happens when there is a long line of identical pulls on your credit report. So, if you’ve been using national city, like mentioned in the bumpage post, and you have 60 days worth of pulls with nothing in between, your credit file may get chopped.

One potential way to avoid a chopped credit profile (and speed up the bumping process) is to pull from a few sources. CreditKarma pulls Trans Union, you can update daily, and best of all, its free. Truecredit.com allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $15/month. Privacymatters123 allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $30/year.

Probably the best way to avoid choppage is to take a break from pulling your credit report every once in a while.

Remember that car you were thinking about buying? Credit inquiry. New cell phone? Credit inquiry. What about that store credit card to get a lousy 10% off? Credit inquiry.

Soft inquiries (inquries you initiate not for credit)  such as pulling your credit report do not harm your score. Credit inquiries resulting from you requesting credit hurt your score. These are “hard inquiries” and most people think they won’t go away until they naturally fall off your credit report (2 years by law). There is a way to get the inquries off sooner.

Each credit reporting agency (CRA) such as Equifax (EQ) Trans Union (TU) or Experian (EX) has slots in wich they put your inquiries, hard or soft. Basically bumpage is filling all the slots for credit inquries with soft inquiries. The new soft inquiries “bump” off the hard inquiries and raise your credit score.  NOTE: This will not work with Experian.

Don’t worry if you only have a couple of hard inquiries on your report. Use bumpage if you have MANY inquiries you’d like to get off relatively soon. If you pull every day, it should take about 90 days to bump your hard inquiries. It takes a little determination, but 90 days is a lot better than two years. I used this tactic after my App-O-Rama (signed up for 20-30 credit cards at once for 0% offers and bonuses), and healed my score in short order.

A cheap way to pull your credit report is using National City Identity Protect. They allow one pull every 24 hours.

Watch out for “choppage” and “splittage.” They’re beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here, but learn more by reading this post.