Your credit report, and how to fix errors on it

Your credit report is the detailed record of your borrowing that each bureau keeps. The one official, federally authorized place to get all three for free is AnnualCreditReport.com. As things stand, you can request your reports there each week at no cost. Be a little wary of the look-alike sites that advertise "free" reports and then quietly attach a paid subscription, they are counting on you not reading closely.

Reports vary a little by bureau, but each is organized into the same broad sections. It helps to read them in this order rather than skimming top to bottom.

• Personal information: your name, addresses and employers. Check for misspellings or addresses that are not yours, which can signal a mixed or fraudulent file.
• Accounts (tradelines): each card and loan, its balance, limit, payment history and status. This is the heart of the report and where most scoring information lives.
• Inquiries: who has pulled your credit. Hard inquiries from your applications can affect your score; soft inquiries (your own checks, prescreened offers) do not.
• Public records and collections: items such as certain bankruptcies and accounts sent to collections. These carry significant negative weight.

As you go, flag anything that does not look right: an account you never opened, a late payment you are sure you made on time, a balance that seems off, an inquiry you did not authorize. Those flagged items are exactly what a dispute is for.

• Accounts that are not yours, or that belong to someone with a similar name (a "mixed file").
• A payment reported late that you actually made on time.
• An account still shown as open that you closed, or a balance that is not current.
• Duplicate accounts, or a single debt listed by both the original lender and a collector as if they were two debts.
• Negative items older than the reporting limit (generally seven years; up to ten for Chapter 7 bankruptcy).
• Hard inquiries you never authorized, which can be a sign of fraud.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives you the right to dispute information you believe is inaccurate or incomplete, and it costs nothing to do. You genuinely do not need to pay anyone to file a dispute on your behalf, whatever the ads suggest.

1. 1Gather proof. Collect statements, payment confirmations or letters that support your case.
2. 2File the dispute with the credit bureau reporting the error, online, by mail or by phone. Filing with each bureau that shows the error matters, because they maintain separate files.
3. 3Explain clearly what is wrong and what the correct information is, and include copies (never originals) of your evidence.
4. 4Wait for the investigation. The bureau generally must investigate and respond, usually within about 30 days, and will contact the company that supplied the information.
5. 5Review the result. If the information is corrected, ask for an updated report. If the dispute is rejected and you still disagree, you can add a statement of dispute to your file and escalate.

Accounts or inquiries you do not recognize can be a sign of identity theft, and it is worth acting on rather than hoping it is nothing. Two protective tools are free under federal law: a fraud alert, which tells lenders to take extra steps to verify it is really you, and a security freeze, which blocks new creditors from seeing your report at all until you lift it. Placing and removing a freeze at all three bureaus costs nothing.

For a fuller walkthrough of protecting your identity and weighing monitoring options, the related guides below go deeper.