credit reporting

Credit Bureaus, Tenant Screening, Background Checks, and Other Reports

Credit and consumer reporting is one of today's most active areas of consumer litigation, involving individual and class cases against the national consumer reporting agencies aka the “Big Three credit bureaus” (Trans Union, Equifax and Experian), tenant screening agencies, background check companies, and furnishers and users of consumer reports. Credit and consumer report errors can cause significant injury to a consumer's access to credit, employment, residential rentals, and insurance.

Credit and consumer reporting is governed by federal law - the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Possible Credit Files - You May Have More Than One Credit File

Consumer reporting agencies (commonly known as "credit reporting agencies" or "credit bureaus") provide consumer reports (commonly  known as "credit reports") to subscribers who use the information to make credit granting decisions.  In order to obtain a consumer report, the agencies require their subscribers (i.e. banks, department stores, insurance companies and others) to furnish the name and address for the person on whom they are inquiring.  Some agencies, such as Trans Union, also encourage subscribers to provide a consumer's social security number as well. At any given time, the national consumer reporting agencies maintain hundreds of millions of "credit files" in their databases.  A credit file contains indicative information (such as name, address, former address, social security number and other information) and individual trade lines (such as account number, credit terms, payment history and other items) belonging to the consumer.  These files relate to the credit active consumers across the United States of which there are approximately 250 million, meaning that many consumers have more than one file in a consumer reporting agency's system.