How to read a credit report, section by section

This is the practical companion to everything else in this section. Reports differ in layout between agencies, but the categories are the same.

First, get the right document

15 U.S.C. § 1681g(a)(1) entitles you, on request, to “[a]ll information in the consumer’s file at the time of the request,” subject to stated exceptions. That is the file disclosure, and it is broader than most consumer-facing products.

Ask for that, not a score subscription, and get all three. Errors are frequently on one agency and not the others.

Personal information — read this first

Everyone skips it. It is the most diagnostic section on the page.

Check every entry:

• Name variants. Middle initials, suffixes, maiden names, misspellings.
• Addresses. Every one. An address you have never lived at is the single clearest sign your file may be mixed with another person’s — see when someone else’s information lands in your file.
• Date of birth. Close-but-wrong is a signal, not a typo.
• Social Security number, usually partially masked. Check the visible digits.
• Employers. An employer you never had is the same signal as an address you never lived at.

Wrong identifiers are what keep two people’s data merging. Removing a wrong tradeline while leaving a wrong address leaves the mechanism in place.

Accounts — field by field

For each account, the fields that carry disputes:

• Creditor name — and whether it matches who you actually dealt with. After a sale, the name may be a buyer you have never heard of.
• Account number, usually partial. Enough to tell two accounts apart.
• Date opened — wrong dates affect history length and can indicate an account that is not yours.
• Account type and responsibility — individual, joint, authorized user, co-signer. Being reported as responsible for an account where you were an authorized user is a real and common error.
• Current status — open, closed, paid, charged off, in collection.
• Balance and past due amount. A paid or discharged debt showing a balance owed is the classic error. See your report after a bankruptcy.
• Payment history — the month-by-month grid. Check specific months against your records; a single wrongly marked late is disputable.
• Date of last activity and date of first delinquency. The second controls when the item ages off, and it is the most error-prone field on any collection. See the date that controls the clock.
• Who closed it. “Closed by consumer” and “closed by creditor” are different facts.

Collections

Everything above, plus:

• Is the original creditor identified? You should be able to trace it to something you recognize.
• Is the same debt reported twice? Original creditor plus collector, or multiple buyers. See debt collectors and your credit report.
• Does the date of first delinquency trace to the original account rather than to the date a collector acquired it?
• If it is medical, is the provider identifiable? See medical debt and medical information.

Public records

• Is it yours? Compare case number, court, and county.
• Is the disposition current? Vacated, satisfied, dismissed, discharged. Nobody updates these automatically — see judgments, liens, and bankruptcies.
• Is the date of entry right? It drives the reporting period.

Inquiries

Two kinds, and reports distinguish them. Ones tied to something you did, and ones you did not initiate — account reviews and promotional offers.

An inquiry from a company you have no relationship with and cannot account for is worth asking about. Under § 1681g(a)(3) you can require identification of each person that procured a report — two years for employment purposes, one year otherwise. See who is allowed to pull your credit report.

The summary of rights you were sent with it

Section 1681g(c) requires agencies to provide a summary of rights with each written disclosure. It describes the right to obtain a copy, the frequency and circumstances of free reports, the right to dispute, the right to obtain a credit score and how, how to contact the agencies, federal enforcement contact information, and notice that consumers may have additional rights under state law.

It also states that agencies need not remove accurate derogatory information unless it is outdated or cannot be verified — which is the single most important sentence in it, and the one most worth absorbing before you dispute anything.

A working method

1. Get all three file disclosures.
2. Read personal information first, on all three, and list every identifier that is not yours.
3. Go account by account, comparing the same account across all three reports. Discrepancies between agencies for the same account are the fastest way to find an error.
4. Write down each problem specifically — which account, which field, what it says, what is true.
5. Keep the reports, dated, even after corrections. The superseded copy is the proof of what it said.

We do not tell you whether anything on your report is wrong. That is a comparison between the report and facts only you have. What this page gives you is the order to read it in, and which fields carry the errors that matter.