If a lender, an insurer or a landlord turned you down and mentioned LexisNexis, they were not talking about the legal research service lawyers use. They meant LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a separate business that keeps a file on you and sells it. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lists it among the consumer reporting companies people can request a file from, which means the Fair Credit Reporting Act applies to it — including your right to see the file, to dispute what is wrong, and to sue if the error is not fixed.
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What LexisNexis Risk Solutions actually holds on you
The CFPB describes the company as one that “provides information to financial institutions, insurance carriers, healthcare providers and government agencies from public records and proprietary data sources.” Both the CFPB and LexisNexis itself describe the contents of the consumer file in the same terms:
| What the file contains | Real estate transaction and ownership data, lien, judgment and bankruptcy records, professional license information, and historical addresses |
| Who buys it | Financial institutions, insurance carriers, healthcare providers, government agencies |
| Free copy | One every 12 months on request, delivered within fifteen days |
| Security freeze | Available on request, no fee to apply, lift or remove |
Two things follow from that list. The first is that most of what LexisNexis reports about you was never reported by you — it comes out of county courthouses, deed registries and licensing boards, and nobody at those offices checks that the record they filed under your name belongs to you rather than to someone with a similar one. The second is that a judgment or a lien attached to the wrong person is not a small clerical matter. It is the kind of entry that decides an insurance premium or a mortgage.
The part most people get wrong: there is more than one LexisNexis file
People often ask for “my LexisNexis report,” get one document, and assume they have seen everything. They have not. The company runs several distinct products, and asking for one does not produce the others.
| Consumer Disclosure Report | The main file — public records, addresses, liens, judgments, bankruptcies |
| C.L.U.E. report | Insurance claims history, auto and property |
| Current Carrier | Auto insurance coverage history |
| Riskview | A scored product used in lending decisions |
| Accurint Comprehensive Report | Public record, non-public and publicly available information, returned by mail in roughly 30 to 60 days |
| SageStream | A separate consumer reporting agency covered by the same LexisNexis security freeze |
If you were denied insurance rather than credit, the file that mattered was almost certainly C.L.U.E. rather than the Consumer Disclosure Report. If a debt collector found you at an address you left years ago, the product involved was likely Accurint. We keep a separate page on SageStream because it operates as its own reporting agency even though the freeze covers both.
The numbers and addresses, and which one does what
LexisNexis publishes several different contact points, and using the wrong one is the most common reason a request goes nowhere. These are taken from the company’s own consumer pages and from the CFPB’s company listing:
| Consumer Center, by post | LexisNexis Risk Solutions Consumer Center, P.O. Box 105108, Atlanta, GA 30348-5108 |
| Request your disclosure report | 1-866-897-8126 |
| Security freeze, by post | Same box, addressed Attn: Security Freeze |
| Security freeze, by phone | 1-800-456-1244 |
| Consumer Center, dispute follow-up | 888-497-0011 |
| Lien disputes | 1-800-728-0927 extension 6316 |
| Bankruptcy disputes | 1-800-676-6856 or 1-210-301-6440 |
| Accurint report requests | 866-868-9534 |
| Information suppression, by post | LexisNexis Individual Requests for Information Suppression, PO Box 933, Dayton, OH 45401 |
Note the split. Everything to do with your consumer file goes to the Atlanta box. Suppression — the opt-out route — goes to a different box in Dayton, Ohio, and does a different job. If a letter you received names its own return address, use the one on the letter and keep a copy of it.
How to get your file
You can request the Consumer Disclosure Report online through the LexisNexis consumer portal, by telephone on 1-866-897-8126, or by posting the printable request form to the Atlanta box above. The CFPB states the company will provide one free report every 12 months and must deliver it within fifteen days of receiving the request.
Ask for it in writing if you can, and keep proof of posting. If a dispute later turns into a claim, the date you asked and the date the file arrived both matter, and a certified mail receipt settles arguments that would otherwise take months.
How to dispute an error
Say precisely what is wrong and why, rather than that the report is generally inaccurate. Name the entry, the date and the source. Attach proof — the satisfaction of judgment, the release of lien, the bankruptcy discharge, the deed showing the property was never yours, the court docket showing the case was dismissed or belonged to someone else.
Include your full name with any middle initial or suffix, your date of birth, your current address and your addresses for the past two years. A mismatch on any of those is one of the ordinary reasons another person’s record ends up attached to your file in the first place. If the entry came from a court or a county office, dispute it with that office as well, because a record corrected only at LexisNexis can be re-imported the next time the company refreshes its data.
What happens after you dispute
LexisNexis says that once a dispute is authenticated you will receive “a follow up letter with the specific results of your dispute,” identifying the reason for the dispute, the results of the reinvestigation, the source of the data, whether it was verified, and “a current copy of consumer’s file with the most up to date data.”
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act a consumer reporting agency generally has 30 days to investigate, extending to 45 days if you send additional information while the investigation is running. Disputing is free. If the response tells you the entry was verified and you know it is still wrong, that letter is not the end of the matter — it is usually the most important document in the file, because it shows the company was told and left the entry in place.
Security freeze
A security freeze at LexisNexis “prohibits LexisNexis Risk Solutions and SageStream from releasing your LexisNexis Consumer Disclosure Report, your SageStream Consumer Report, or your credit score without your express authorization.” Depending on the state you live in, freezes may also be requested on C.L.U.E., Current Carrier and Riskview reports.
The company states it does not charge a fee to apply, lift or remove a freeze. You can place one online, by post to the Atlanta box marked Attn: Security Freeze, or by telephone on 1-800-456-1244. A freeze at LexisNexis does not freeze anything at Equifax, Experian or TransUnion — those are separate requests to separate companies.
Opting out is not the same as disputing
Information suppression removes you from certain LexisNexis products. It is not a correction, it does not fix an inaccurate entry, and it does not apply to reports governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which are exactly the ones that decide credit and insurance. People who opt out expecting a wrong judgment to disappear from a lender’s view are usually disappointed. If the entry is wrong, dispute it. If you simply do not want to be in the marketing and locator products, suppression is the route, and it goes to the Dayton box.
When an error becomes a claim
The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not make a company liable merely for being wrong. What creates a claim is what happens after you tell them. If you disputed an entry, the company failed to investigate reasonably, the wrong information stayed in your file, and something followed from it — a denial, a higher premium, a lost apartment, a job offer withdrawn — that is the shape of a case.
Keep the denial letter, the adverse action notice naming LexisNexis, your dispute, and the response. Those four documents are what a claim is built from. We also handle errors on the nationwide credit bureaus, which is covered on our credit report attorney page, and errors in employment screening, covered under background check errors. For the statute itself and how claims under it work, see our FCRA lawyer page, and for how these companies fit together, our overview of consumer reporting agencies.
Talk to us before the deadline runs
Reviewing a LexisNexis file and the correspondence around it costs nothing, and you pay nothing unless we win. If you are holding a letter from LexisNexis, a denial that mentions it, or a dispute response you think is wrong, send it over and we will tell you whether there is a claim in it.