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Fair Credit Reporting Act
According to the FTC, the FCRA—which went into effect in 1971—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 FCRA. These include:
- the right to receive a complete copy of your credit report;
- the right to 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;
- the right to 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;
- the right to a free copy of your credit report if you’ve been turned
down for credit because of information in that credit report;
- the right to 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;
- the right to an investigation by the CRA within 30 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;
- the right to have inaccurate information removed within 30 days, and the
right to have the CRA that removes the information report it to the other
CRAs;
- the right to add a “summary explanation” to your report if
you are unhappy with the way a dispute over an inaccuracy is resolved;
- the right to restrict access to your credit report to people who have
a “permissible purpose” (see Chapter 7 for more on who can access
your report);
- the right to remove your name from lists that CRAs sell to marketers;
and
- the right to sue for damages if someone accesses your report without “permissible
purpose” or violates one of the other provisions of the FCRA.
Next: What’s in
Your Report? |
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