I am not very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of credit report agencies and what is and isn’t important on your credit report.
Looking over my reports I see listed as addresses I have lived several places where I never resided. Each one of them are former residences of my ex-wife. Suffice to say I do not want to be connected to her financial history.
Are the addresses listed on the reports important? Will removing those addresses do anything one way or the other to my credit report? How easy would it be to get them removed?
I had some addresses removed from mine, and it wasn’t difficult at all. I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but it was all done online through the Experian, Equifax and TransUnion websites. I think I had to run a free credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com and then I followed some links from there. All I did was fill in a few online forms and submit them. I believe once that is done, the agency contacts whichever company is reporting the bad information and that company can either just delete it or show proof that the information is correct. There is probably a way to do it that involves writing actually memos and mailing them to the companies, but I did it much easier than that.
I am not sure if it matters much for the score, but I am proud to say that last month I had a FICO score of 828. I couldn’t believe it!
The credit reporting agencies seem to just vacuum up any dirt they can find on you, wherever they might find it laying around. I’ve had some strange addresses show up.
For many years, one of my reports showed a one-line address at “RR Arkfield”. I have no clue where that may have come from. Did someone report that I was a hobo living in a boxcar aboard the Arkfield Railroad? Where the hell is Arkfield anyway?
More recently, while a prospective landlord was doing a background check on me, said landlord entered my then-address slightly wrong – mis-spelled the street name by dropping one letter. Background check came back red-flagged that I had given a non-existent address. Okay, got that fixed quick enough. But for years thereafter, that mis-spelled street name appeared on my credit reports as another place I had lived.
Eons ago I ran a skip tracing firm. We used a lot of credit bureau data. It was appalling how filthy that data was.
It was also appalling how many legit & experienced users of credit data had no idea how filthy it was. “If Trans Union says it, it must be true” was the motto of a disturbing number of credit-granting entities. And landlords.
This was long before the era where credit checks became a routine part of pre-hiring background investigations. I shudder to think how many people are unemployable today because of garbage data in their credit reports.
Way back in the USAF I initially had a problem getting a security clearance because they thought I had omitted several prior addresses from my clearance application. The ignorant morons from Defense Investigative Service couldn’t recognize that Trans Union had glued my Mom & I together and had placed me at several addresses she had moved to after I’d left her home to live on my own.
People are stupid. Computers are stupid, but in a different way. Working together, they manage to be stupid in all ways.
Man, that is so true. I’ve looked at my credit report a few times and it sort of looks like my credit history was compiled by a half-blind drunk with serious amnesia which he compensates for by just making things up and confusing me with other people. I count myself fortunate as not caring what my credit history looks like since I don’t need it for anything. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it bears so little resemblance to reality.
I am dealing with an identity thief – and the way I was tipped off was an unfamiliar address on my credit report. I strongly suggest you pull your credit report (you can get one for free in the US).
So far she’s opened five accounts in my name (including DirectTV, Comcast, Victoria’s Secret and ToysRUs) and not paid any of them. When I got around to looking at my credit report, it had taken a nosedive because she had accounts in collections.
If you find that you have false accounts in your name, FTC has a fairly user-friendly process to follow to get them removed. They provide sample letters and forms.
On the one hand, an address you ‘lived at’ 9 years ago, but didn’t actually live at, probably isn’t going to do much damage, but I’d get it removed. Hate to find out someone has a lien on it from that time frame or your ex owes some old back-rent and they come after you. Hell, sometimes people use stuff from your credit report as security questions and it could come up wrong. I’m a fan of getting any thing cleaned up you possibly can. When I first checked my credit report I found a few things on it that were wrong and a few things on my (now) ex-wife’s that were wrong. On mine, it took about a year to clean them up after all the back and forth…as for her’s, they might still be there. Luckily, on both of ours, it was credit cards from people that were keeping them in good standing so they (mostly) weren’t hurting us.
The reason I say that is because if there is a time when you need it gone, for whatever reason, you don’t want to start working on it then, you want it already nice and clean.
My ex called me a few months ago because she was buying a new house. She was annnoyed that my HELOC was still on her credit report. I told her I’d remove it, which I did, that day. But she didn’t understand that it still took a few billing cycles before it was gone. If she had looked at her credit report any time in the past 5 years she would have seen it there and could have asked me about it. Luckily she has/had and understanding banker so all it took was a call from me to let him know that the house was in my name and she wasn’t responsible for any of it, but it still delayed her getting the house for a few weeks.
The interesting thing about hers is that she couldn’t get it removed. The person had the same name as her and something about them living in Canada messed with the SSN portion enough that it made it a big huge deal to remove it. She lost interest and I think I forgot about it. For all I know, it’s still there.
Anyways, just hit the dispute button (on each report) and go from there. In all likelihood, a few months later, it’ll be gone. It might not hurt for you to call the landlord and give them a heads up just so that they know what’s going on.
I use TrueCredit. I can refresh my TransUnion credit report all I want, plus, if any of my credit reports change or get pinged it emails me. It’s nice because I can be sitting at a car dealership and get the email (about the inquiry) while I’m still sitting there, that’s how fast I find out about activity.
If you’re in the middle of this, you may want to lock your credit reports, it should be free and it’ll prevent new accounts from being opened in your name.
Of course, and just to clarify my earlier post, I was agreeing with** LSLGuy** about the general incompetence of credit bureaus – but a pattern of identity theft is of course a whole different issue and certainly does have to be taken seriously.
The kind of incompetence I’m talking about is like a record of late payments that have nothing to do with me except for a name similarity, or even being unable to get my own free credit report which happened many years ago. Apparently I didn’t know my own date of birth, and unless I could guess correctly what these stupid incompetents at Equifax had on their records, I would not get my credit report!
