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| What are my rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)? |
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Last Updated
9th of October, 2009
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The FCRA was designed to ensure that consumer reporting agencies, or CRAs, “furnish correct and complete information to businesses to use when evaluating your application.” To help ensure the information is correct and complete, the Act ensures that consumers can check their own reports and make changes to them, if necessary.
As a consumer, you have a number of rights under the 1971 Fair Credit Reporting Act. These include the rights to:
- receive a complete copy of your credit report;
- know the name of anyone who has received a copy of your credit report within the last year—or within the last two years, if it was for employment purposes;
- know the name and address of the CRA a lender, credit card provider or other company has contacted, if that company denied your application for credit;
- a free copy of your credit report if you’ve been turned down for credit because of information in that credit report;
- contest the accuracy or completeness of the information in your credit report, both with the CRA and with the company that provided that information to the CRA;
- an investigation by the CRA within thirty days of you reporting an inaccuracy, as well as the right to have the company that provided information you question in your credit report investigate it;
- have inaccurate information removed within thirty days, and the right to have the CRA that removes the information report it to the other CRAs;
- add a “summary explanation” to your report if you are unhappy with the way a dispute over an inaccuracy is resolved;
- restrict access to your credit report to people who have a “permissible purpose”;
- remove your name from lists that CRAs sell to marketers; and
- sue for damages if someone accesses your report without “permissible purpose” or violates one of the other provisions of the FCRA.
Read the full Act and its provisions.
Not sure where you stand credit-wise? Check your reports and scores online today!
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