What Are My Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act?

You can dispute the completeness or accuracy of any item of information contained in your consumer report.

If a reinvestigation by a consumer reporting agency does not resolve your dispute, you may file a brief statement setting forth the nature of the dispute. The consumer reporting agency may limit such statements to not more than one hundred words if it provides you with assistance in writing a clear summary of the dispute. Additionally, if you receive a notice of adverse action, you have the right to dispute the accuracy or completeness of any information in a consumer report furnished by the agency. This guide does not settle all details regarding initiating a dispute beyond what is outlined here.

Except as authorized, a consumer reporting agency may not include certain items of information in a consumer report that antedate the report beyond specific time periods:

• Cases under title 11 or under the Bankruptcy Act that antedate the report by more than 10 years from the date of entry of the order for relief or the date of adjudication.
• Civil suits, civil judgments, and records of arrest that antedate the report by more than seven years from the date of entry or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is the longer period.
• Paid tax liens that antedate the report by more than seven years from the date of payment.
• Accounts placed for collection or charged to profit and loss that antedate the report by more than seven years.
• Any other adverse item of information, other than records of convictions of crimes, that antedates the report by more than seven years.

When a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute from you regarding the completeness or accuracy of an item of information, it must provide notification of the dispute to any person who provided the disputed item before the expiration of the 5-business-day period beginning on the date it received your notice.

The agency must include all relevant dispute information received from you in that notice.

If the agency determines that your dispute is frivolous or irrelevant—including due to your failure to provide sufficient information to investigate—it may terminate the reinvestigation and must notify you of that determination by mail or other authorized means within 5 business days.

When a statement of dispute is filed, unless there are reasonable grounds to believe it is frivolous or irrelevant, the agency must clearly note in any subsequent consumer report containing the information that it is disputed by you, and provide either your statement or a clear and accurate codification or summary of it. Furthermore, following any deletion of information found to be inaccurate or unverifiable, or following any notation of a dispute, the agency must, at your request, furnish notification of the deletion or your statement, codification, or summary to any person specifically designated by you who received a report containing the deleted or disputed information within two years prior for employment purposes, or within six months prior for any other purpose.

You are entitled to receive a free copy of your consumer report from a consumer reporting agency without charge under specific circumstances.

For instance, each consumer reporting agency that maintains a file on you must make all disclosures without charge if you make a request not later than 60 days after receiving a notification of adverse action or a notification from an affiliated debt collection agency stating that your credit rating may be or has been adversely affected. The centralized source for requesting a consumer report provides a toll-free telephone number, an internet website, and a process for requests by mail.