Consumer Reporting Agencies: The Companies That Keep a File on You

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a consumer reporting agency is not limited to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Any company that regularly gathers information on consumers and furnishes reports to third parties for credit, employment, housing, or insurance decisions is covered — which sweeps in tenant screening companies, employment background check vendors, check and bank account screening databases, insurance and property loss databases, and the subprime bureaus that sell alternative-credit data to payday and auto lenders.

Every one of these companies owes you the same core obligations: it must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, it must give you a copy of your file when you ask, and it must reinvestigate an item you dispute rather than passing the dispute along and rubber-stamping whatever the source says. Those duties are what most of our cases are built on.