Know your rights before you get yourself into some miserable circumstances at the hand of credit reporting agencies. Consumer rights against these agencies are protected under Fair Credit Reporting Act. The act ensures that credit reporting agencies respect consumer information's accuracy, fairness, and privacy.
A credit report impacts many areas of your life, including taking a loan, buying a house, or getting a job. It becomes important to be aware of what information your credit report contains, whether it is correct, and what you can do if it is not. For that specific purpose, you must regularly check your credit reports to save yourself from unforeseeable events beforehand.
Here are some of the rights that you have against credit reporting agencies listed below:
· You are entitled to be provided all the information in your credit file and get a free disclosure of your credit report upon request every year.
· You have a right to obtain a credit score on your credit report
· You have a right to dispute any inaccurate or incomplete information to the credit reporting agency. The information must be investigated by the agency on its own and verified. In case of inaccurate data, the agency must delete, correct, or update the data within 30 days of the dispute.
· You can dispute again and again if the agency doesn’t respond or refuse to take down that incorrect data from the report. As the agency must provide accurate data in the credit report, they are liable to reinvestigate the matter.
· Credit report agencies can only keep the negative information in your report for up to 7 years and bankruptcy or court judgment for ten years. After that, they can no longer report it.
· Credit report agencies must notify the consumer if any institution submits any negative data. It is your right to be aware of that.
· Credit reporting agencies should respect your privacy; for that, they are not allowed to provide your credit report to any entity with no valid need specified in the Act.
· You have a right to sue the credit reporting agency in the state court upon FCRA and seek damages.
It is sincerely advised that you keep these rights in mind whenever you encounter issues concerning your credit report.
