What is a Credit Report?

The Federal Trade Commission says, "One of the best ways to catch identity theft is to regularly check your credit report."

What is a Credit Report?

Every time you apply or are approved for credit, companies check and report to credit reporting bureaus.

What to look for when you get your credit report:

  • Review your reports carefully. looking for:
  • Inquiries you didn't initiate,
  • Accounts you didn't open,
  • Unexplained debts on your true accounts, and
  • Name, address and SSN, employers are correct

What is in your credit report?

  • Your name, current and previous addresses, phone number, Social Security number variations, date of birth and current and previous employers. Your spouse's name may appear on your version of the credit report but it will not appear on the version that is provided to others. This information comes from your credit applications, so its accuracy depends on your filling out the forms clearly, completely and consistently each time you apply for credit.
  • Specific information about each account such as the date opened, credit limit or loan amount, balance, monthly payment and payment pattern during the past several years. This information comes from companies that do business with you.
  • Federal district bankruptcy records and state and county court records of tax liens and monetary judgments. This information comes from public records.
  • The names of those who have obtained a copy of your credit report. This information comes from the credit reporting agency.
  • Statements of dispute, which allow both consumers and creditors to report the factual history of an account. Statements of dispute can only be added after a consumer officially disputes the status of an account, the account has been investigated, and the consumer and creditor cannot agree about the account status. Both the consumer's and creditor's statements of the account status will appear on the credit report.
  • Your credit report does not contain data about race, religious preference, personal lifestyle, political preference, medical history, friends, criminal record or any other information unrelated to credit.

How to get your credit report:

FraudWatch International advises that the best protection against Identity Theft is to monitor your credit report. Although it is not insurance against Identity Theft, fast detection of misuse of information has proved to be the best method of reducing the implications of Identity Theft.

We recommend the use of a credit monitoring service, where you receive alerts when any information on your credit report changes or when there is any activity on your credit report.

Contact details of the Credit Bureau's can be found below.

Credit Bureau Contact Information

Credit Bureaus gather information about how consumers use credit and sell that information to anyone who has a legally permissible purpose. That is why we all get credit and other offers - this is one way in which the credit bureaus make money.

You can remove your name from marketing lists of the three credit reporting bureaus to reduce the number of pre-approved credit offers you receive.

Below is the main address and telephone numbers for the three major credit bureaus in the U.S.

Equifax
P.O. Box 740241
Atlanta, GA 30374
1-800-685-1111

Experian
P.O. Box 2002
Allen, TX 75013
1 888 397 3742

Trans Union
P.O. Box 1000
Chester, PA 19022
1-800-888-4213