Credit reporting for US expats

I had naively imagined that my US credit report is very much keyed to my name, social security number, date of birth, etc. It turns out that there is now a central Annual Credit Report website that covers the major credit reporting agencies. However, both that and the individual agencies do not allow me to check my report if I do not have a current US address. I wonder if my desire to check that identify theft has not occurred during my sojourn in Scotland is somehow unreasonable or mistaken. Perhaps I am missing something about how credit reporting works, is it much more tied to one's address than I had realized?