A mixed or merged credit report is the result of a consumer reporting agency's inaccurate merging of credit information (commonly referred to in the industry as "tradeline" information) and/or an entire credit file belonging to one consumer onto the credit report of another consumer. There are many different possible causes for the merging of tradelines but all of them relate in one way or another the algorithms (the database rules) used by consumer reporting agencies to match tradelines to a particular consumer's credit file. The success or failure of these algorithms or rules is both a function of the rules themselves and of the information provided by the furnishers of the tradeline information to the consumer reporting agencies. In other words, a mixed credit report could be caused by an improper algorithm just as it could be caused by the inaccurate reporting of a consumer's personal or "indicative" information (e.g., name, social security number, address, date of birth, etc.) by the furnishers to the agencies. These rules also determine which credit files are merged to create a complete credit report. Therefore, a mixed credit report is sometimes the result of the mixing of two or more consumer credit files belonging to different consumers into one credit report. Just as with mixed tradeline information a mixed credit file can be the result of an improper algorithm just as it can be the result of the indicative information used to compile the credit report.
