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Are Credit Report Mistakes Common?As much as we may dislike the idea, credit report mistakes are a fact of life. In 2003, the Federal Reserve looked at the records of 250,000 individuals in the US. Rather shockingly, they concluded that 70 percent of them contained mistakes. Some of those mistakes might be very minor and accidental, others might be career threatening - and almost certainly some were the result of identity theft. In a study in 2004, the Public Interest Research Group, an American organisation for consumer advocacy reviewed 200 reports from a 30 state sample. This is admittedly a very small sample and can in no way represent the files of 300 million Americans. however, they found that almost 80 percent showed mistakes. They highlighted other areas for concern. For example, personal information was misspelled, belonged to a stranger or was outdated a shocking 54 percent of the time. Phew! Isn't it lucky that the modern world does not rely on these details... These errors show that it could be quite easy for an identity thief to masquerade or open other accounts since the illegal actions can be explained away quite easily as 'just an error'. It is hard to justify this as being good enough for any of us. Despite the problems just discussed, most consumers are not aware that it is not the responsibility of the credit bureau to look for and correct credit report mistakes. It is actually the responsibility of the individual to point out any errors and prove or suggest alterations. Since most people are not aware of this, the errors will almost certainly remain. If this does not convince you that you need to look at and try to understand your credit report on a regular basis, it is hard to imagine what will. For other credit report related pages, please go to:
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