If you want a free credit check (until end of December 2006) try garlik.com
It takes a couple of days - lots of security checks, including sending an authorisation code by mail to your home address, but you get lots of info from it for free (they are doing a free launch offer)
http://www.garlik.com/
I found out about it from a BBC news webpage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6102694.stm
This is the summary page, which has tabbed detail pages behind it - they will also find out all web references to you (it takes a couple of weeks).