Category Archives: Credit Reports

Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Plague Consumers

In 2016, Wells Fargo made headlines when it paid $110 million to settle a class action lawsuit and another $185 million in fines relating to allegations that the bank had created as many as 2 million accounts for customers without getting their permission to do so. Then, in December 2022, it paid a whopping $3.7 […]

CFPB’s Multibillion-Dollar Settlement with Credit Repair Firms

On August 28, 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it had reached a $2.7 billion settlement with Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com to resolve allegations that the companies have been violating federal law with their telemarketing practices. As the nation’s two largest “credit repair” companies, the companies earned approximately $388 million in revenue […]

Harmful Data Broker Practices—What Can Be Done to Protect American Consumers

As many as 40 million Americans have errors on their credit reports—and errors on credit reports can cause havoc on someone’s financial well-being, leading them to have potentially higher interest rates on credit cards, mortgages, and car loans. It can even impact their ability to rent an apartment or get a job. Meanwhile, despite the […]

The Pitfalls of “Credit Repair”

In June 2023, the New York Times Sunday Magazine looked inside the chaotic world of “credit repair” companies. The feature tells the story-after-story of how bad credit can ruin people’s financial lives—pushing them to the brink, financially and psychologically. It reveals how credit scores have ties to serious racial and sociological inequity. It explores how […]

What If My Child Has Debt on Their Credit Report?

There’s no law or policy that establishes that children must reach a minimum age before the national credit bureaus begin compiling a credit file on them. (That’s why children can be the victims of identity theft—because fraudsters can use their identities to open bank accounts and credit cards in their names.) So what if a […]

What Do I Do If One Debt Is Listed Multiple Times on My Credit Report?

Having debt on your credit report is a fact of American financial life. But what happens if the same debt is listed multiple times on your report? As the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) has explained, this is not a “harmless error.” That’s because credit bureaus don’t recognize all these entries as duplicates showing the […]

Government Investigating Equifax Compliance with Reporting Requirements

Consumers are used to Equifax scrutinizing their credit activity and using the information to generate credit reports and credit scores that impact so much of their lives—from the interest rates credit card companies charge to the ability to get a job. And studies by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that, unfortunately, many consumers […]

Four Ways AI Scams Can Impact Your Credit Score

For all of the hoopla there has been about how ChatGPT and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications can increase efficiencies and create terrific new content, there’s another darker side to AI. It can also help fraudsters and identity thieves be more effective, too. Let’s review four ways that AI scams can impact your credit score. […]

How Will the End of Student Loan Forbearance Impact Debtors’ Credit

At the height of the Covid pandemic, the Department of Education gave all those who held federal student loans an automatic forbearance. Debtors were not charged interest on their loans and were not required to repay them during the pandemic. However, interest on student loans will begin to accumulate again, starting September 1, 2023, and […]

What You Need to Know about Child Identity Theft

While many parents will get a Social Security Number for their child, it may be many years before the child uses their identification for financial purposes (e.g., opening a bank account). In the intervening time, the dormancy of children’s information makes kids an ideal target for identity thieves. The children’s underlying data is real, but […]