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Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
Here is a summary of your
major rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
For more information, including information
about additional rights, go to
www.ftc.gov/credit.
You must be told if info in your file has
been used against you.
Anyone who uses a credit
report or another type of consumer report to deny
your application for credit, insurance, or
employment or to take another adverse action against
you must tell you and must give you the name,
address, and phone number of the agency that
provided the information.
You
have the right to know what is in your file.
You
may request and obtain all the information about you
in the files of a consumer reporting agency.
You will be required to provide proper
identification, which may include your Social
Security number. In many cases, the disclosure will
be free.
You are entitled to a free file disclosure if:
a. a person has taken adverse action against you because
of information in your credit report;
b. you are the
victim of identify theft and place a fraud alert in
your file;
c. your file contains inaccurate
information as a result of fraud;
d. you are on
public assistance; and
e. you are unemployed but
expect to apply for employment within 60 days.
In addition, all consumers are entitled to one
free
disclosure every 12 months upon request from each
nationwide credit bureau and from nationwide
specialty consumer reporting agencies.
You have the right to ask for a credit score.
Credit scores are numerical summaries of your
credit-worthiness based on information from credit
bureaus. You may request a credit score from
consumer reporting agencies that create scores or
distribute scores used in residential real property
loans, but you will have to pay for it. In some
mortgage transactions, you will receive credit score
information for free from the mortgage lender.
You have the right to dispute incomplete or
inaccurate information.
If you identify
information in your file that is incomplete or
inaccurate, and report it to the consumer reporting
agency, the agency must investigate unless your
dispute is frivolous.
Consumer reporting agencies
must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or
unverifiable information.
Inaccurate, incomplete
or unverifiable information must be removed or
corrected, usually within 30 days. However, a
consumer reporting agency may continue to report
information it has verified as accurate.
Consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated
negative information.
In most cases, a consumer
reporting agency may not report negative information
that is more than seven years old, or bankruptcies
that are more than 10 years old.
Access to your file is
limited.
A consumer reporting agency may provide
information about you only to people with a valid
need usually to consider an application with a
creditor, insurer, employer, landlord, or other
business. The FCRA specifies those with a valid need
for access.
You must
give your consent for reports to be provided to
employers.
A consumer reporting agency may not
give out information about you to your employer, or
a potential employer, without your written consent
given to the employer. Written consent generally is
not required in the trucking industry.
You may limit “prescreened” offers of credit and
insurance you get based on information in your
credit report.
Unsolicited “prescreened” offers
for credit and insurance must include a toll-free
phone number you can call if you choose to remove
your name and address from the lists these offers
are based on. You may opt-out with the nationwide
credit bureaus at 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688).
You may
seek damages from violators.
If a consumer
reporting agency, or, in some cases, a user of
consumer reports or a furnisher of information to a
consumer reporting agency violates the FCRA, you may
be able to sue in state or federal court.
Identity
theft victims and active duty military personnel
have additional rights. |
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