According to the FTC, the Fair Credit Reporting Act -”FCRA,” was designed to ensure that all consumer reporting agencies, or CRAs, “furnish correct and complete information to businesses to use when evaluating your credit or credit application.”

To help ensure the information is correct and complete, the Act ensures that consumers can check their own reports and make changes to them, if necessary.

As a consumer, you have several rights under the FCRA. These rights include:

◦- the right to receive a complete copy of your credit report;

◦- the right to know the name of anyone who has received a copy of your credit report within the last year—or within the last two years, if it was for employment purposes;

◦- the right to know the name and address of the CRA a lender, credit card provider or other company has contacted, if that company denied your application for credit;

◦- the right to a free copy of your credit report if you’ve been turned down for credit because of information in that credit report;

◦- the right to contest the accuracy or completeness of the information in your credit report, both with the CRA and with the company that provided that information to the CRA;

◦- the right to an investigation by the CRA within 30 days of you reporting an inaccuracy, as well as the right to have the company that provided information you question in your credit report investigate it;

◦- the right to have inaccurate information removed within 30 days, and the right to have the CRA that removes the information report it to the other CRAs;

◦- the right to add a “summary explanation” to your report if you are unhappy with the way a dispute over an inaccuracy is resolved;

◦- the right to restrict access to your credit report to people who have a “permissible purpose” (see Chapter 7 for more on who can access your report);

◦- the right to remove your name from lists that CRAs sell to marketers; and

◦- the right to sue for damages if someone accesses your report without “permissible purpose” or violates one of the other provisions of the FCRA.