Your Credit File

Your credit bureau file contains your name, address, social security number, and your birth date. It may include information about your past and current employers, positions and incomes and whether you own or rent your home. Your credit file may also contain detailed credit information.

Credit file information is continuously updated, but old details disappear slowly. Each time you buy from a reporting store on credit or take out a loan, a credit bureau is informed of your account number and of the date, amount, terms and type of credit. As you make payments, your file is updated to show the outstanding balance, the number and the amounts of payments past due, and the frequency of 30-, 60-, or 90-day lateness. Your record may indicate the largest amount of credit you have had and the maximum limit permitted by the creditor. Also, each inquiry about you may be recorded. If you have been refused credit, that may also be entered into your file. If this has happened frequently, a creditor may be wary; he will at least want to consider the reasons for the refusals. Any suits, judgments, or tax liens against you may appear as well.

Who may obtain your credit report? Your credit report may be issued only to properly identified persons for approved purposes. It may be furnished in response to a court order or in accordance with your own written request. It may also be provided to someone who will use it in connection with a credit transaction, an employment application, the underwriting of insurance, or some other legitimate business need or the determination of eligibility for a license or other benefit granted by a governmental agency. Your friends or neighbors may not obtain credit information about you. If they request such information, they will be subject to fine and possibly even imprisonment.

If you are denied credit. Anyone turning you down for credit must send you a written rejection notice within 30 days of the decision stating the specific reasons for the rejection. They must also give you the name and address of any credit bureau that issued a report and if other information was used in making the decision, you have the right to learn about that information.

How to obtain a copy of your own report. You are legally entitled to obtain a free credit report every year, from each of the big three credit reporting agencies. Do not pay a company to obtain these free copies for you--unless you have so much money that you use $20 bills to light your cigars! The process to request a copy is very straightforward and can be handled online for the most efficient service.

You can request reports from one of the major bureaus or from all three, from Annual Credit Report.com, which is a centralized service created by the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies - Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Identity theft and phishing scams are serious. The best way to protect yourself from a "spoofed" website (one that appears real, but actually is used to steal financial information) is to type the URL directly into your browser, rather than following a link from another site. In this case, you'd type https://www.annualcreditreport.com directly into the address bar on your browser. Annual Credit Report Request Service also indicates that they never send you an email directly--so if you get an email inviting you to check your credit report, be very cautious!

If you prefer, you can make your request by calling 1-877-322-8228. You can also download a request form from the website and mail it to Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box, 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

And, if you have loads of extra time on your hands, and enjoy waiting for results, you can also contact each company individually at the following addresses:

If you send a written request, include your Social Security number, present and past addresses, and other names you have used.

Review your credit file periodically. It is worth it to check your file each year to ensure no errors have slipped in.

Tip The Wall Street Journal reports that about 25 percent people who asked for a credit report challenged the information they received as incorrect or outdated. Another survey found that 48 percent of the credit reports it reviewed had errors. The most common errors are confusing you with someone else with the same name or a similar Social Security number, including incorrect information, failing to incorporate comments or changes based on information you or your creditor supplied, and failing to remove damaging information after the issue has been resolved.

A federal law protects your rights if the information in your credit file is erroneous. You can see that fair and accurate credit reporting is vital to both creditors and consumers. Therefore, Congress enacted the Fair Credit Reporting Act which regulates the use of credit reports, requires the deletion of obsolete information, and gives the consumer access to his or her file and the right to have erroneous data corrected. Furthermore, only authorized persons are allowed to obtain your credit report.

Time limits on adverse data. Most of the information in your credit file may be reported for only seven years. If you have declared personal bankruptcy, however, that fact may be reported for 10 years. After seven or 10 years, the information in your credit file can't be disclosed by a credit reporting agency unless you are being investigated for a credit application of $50,000 or more, for an application to purchase life insurance for $50,000 or more, or for employment at an annual salary of $20,000 or more. In those situations, the time limits on releasing the information in your credit file do not apply. Nor do those time limits apply if the creditor chooses to use prior adverse information to deny a credit application.