Fraud/Credit that does NOT require a credit check

I couldn't think of cases of credit or even fraud that would not require a credit check

Check under the scam tag here, there are multitude of examples of various fraud schemes that do not at all require any credit check.

Even when it comes to identity theft, it is possible to acquire loans and credit without the lender/creditor pulling the credit report. Creditors may be sloppy, the scammer may have convinced them not to under some pretense, or they were scammed into a fraudulent credit check service or anything else.

I would like to know how to protect myself from whatever this extra forms of fraud are.

If you could, they wouldn't exist. In the end for every protection mechanism there will be a fraudster who'd find a way to circumvent it. Be vigilant, check your credit reports, make sure you don't completely ignore spam mail (sometimes legitimate notices end up being filtered as spam by email providers), and check your mail and voicemail.

Always remember - if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Most fraud relies on the confidence game - trying to convince the mark that it isn't at all a fraud. Human factor is always the weakest link, in any protection scheme.

Fraud can be

• (a) establishing a new line of credit without your approval or
• (b) unauthorized use of your existing legitimate lines of credit
• (c) theft of property (not involving any credit facility)

An alert with the credit bureaus can only help with type (a).

Examples of (b) would be

1. Making purchases using stolen credit card numbers
2. Making purchases using stolen username/password for online merchants, charged to the payment method you saved with the merchant

Examples of (c) would be

1. Investment confidence scams, where the fraudster convinced you to authorize a transfer in hopes of earning money
2. Scare scams, where the fraudster convinced you to authorize a transfer in hopes to ransom a loved one, avoid IRS agents coming to arrest you, hackers emptying your bank, etc
3. Mugging or breaking and entering, absconding with valuable personal property
4. Deed fraud, where the criminals register a fraudulent deed of sale for your house/automobile or other "real" property
5. Unauthorized login to financial accounts (such as retirement accounts or crypto) to transfer out the assets.

There's no involvement of credit reporting bureaus in any of these examples.

As for what you can do, learn principles of good security.

• Don't reuse passwords.
• Tell your phone provider to block SIM swap and number port out.
• Choose two-factor authentication methods other than SMS when you can.
• Don't get fooled into quick actions. If you're under pressure to take some action, talk it over with wise friends first, and believe them if they tell you it's a likely scam.

There are tons of things you cannot control, but mistakes by other parties will generally make them liable and (eventually) you would get your money back, possibly paid by their liability insurance.