December 24,2008
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What Are They Saying About You?, Pt.1 –
– You may want to know.Extensive research shows that you have one chance in four of having incorrect credit reporting hurting you and holding back in ways unknown to you. They include areas like job opportunities, credit cards, car loans and home loans. These are just a few but are the most common. It's not enough that too many inquiries concerning your credit report can hurt you but, even worse, wrongful information about you can be disseminated as truth without your knowing. If you apply for a credit card account and don't end up with favorable conditions or are turned down, it's probably not a matter of luck. It might do good to call that credit card lender and ask what's being said about you.
On the other side, there are many phony entities out there who simply stalk people to gather information. Posing as legitimate credit reporting agencies, they sniff around and entice people to surrender credit card and other information by offering freebees like free credit reports in exchange. You don't know where that information will end up nor how it will be used. It takes a long time to establish good credit and even a while to lose it. But time passes quickly until it's time to fix problems. Even errors take a long time to fix. Until 2010, when the new government regulations go into effect, credit card companies can use medical or mortgage defaults against you. If a $100,000 mortgage default is filed with an account number starting with a leading zero and again without the leading zero (029384,,, vs. 29384...), this will show up on your credit report as two separate instances. This leaves you with a $200,000 default charge against you. It's up to you to fix, no one else cares.
So, whether applying for a credit card or not, it is good to know what's being said about you in the legitimate credit reports.