I have recently been working with a credit restoration company to clean upmy credit. In the process, I have found that in the time betweent Nov 2011 and Nov 2012, there were numerous requests for my credit from one company, CAP ONE. In a years time, this company requested my report 32 times.
Considering I never requested their services in the first place, how did they get my personal information to gain access to my credit report. I have been working for the past 6 years to get my credit to the point of being able to purchase a home and then to learn this information was unbelievable.
How can any company get away with pulling that many reports from a single individual in the first place without raiseing flags somewhere? Is everyone asleep at their computers not to notice all of the requests on the same social security number? Or is this company inplace to intentionally reduce peoples credit by pulling multiple reports on them.
This is a concern to me. Some where out there, 32 inquires where put towards my SS# by people I don't know, and it could be the beginning of and identity theft attempt and no one reported it, except to my credit score.
Robert
Irvine,#2Consumer Comment
Thu, September 19, 2013
First of all without any details of this "restoration" company. Realize that most of these companies operate on the edge of the laws and are often doing things that are not legal. Where anything they do legally is something you can do for yourself for free. If they are doing something like opening up "phantom" lines of credit, this is something that the Credit Reporting Agencies are catching onto and they may look nice on your report but have zero affect on your actual credit score.
As to the inquiries, I hope with all of this work you are doing on your credit you realize that there are 2 types of inquiries.
A "hard" inquiry is an actual request for credit and can effect your credit score. However with most Credit Scoring methods the effect is generally no more than a maximum of 10% of your score. These also remain on your report for 2 years but after the 1st 6 months they have minimal affect where by a year they have almost none.
A "soft" inquiry is where a creditor is getting very generic information about you based on a set of criteria. It is used for things such as those credit offers you receive in the mail. Some of the criteria is based on things such as where you live, if you have good credit or delinquencies. Since you are not requesting credit this does not count against you and you are the only one who sees these inquiries. The only reason they are on there is because by law it must be noted anytime your report is accessed.
Just based on the sheer number of them I would bet that they are "soft" inquiries. But even if they aren't a Credit Reporting Agenices job is to only report activity on your credit report. They are not investigators or fraud prevention specialist to determine if there is any "red flags". There are dozens of companies out there however that will provide that service for a fee. In fact I would wonder if this was a problem why your "restoration" company didn't notice it.
One other item, you can actually stop the soft inquiries by going to www.optoutprescreen.com. If for some reason the link is redacted just go to "www dot opt out prescreen dot com" removing the spaces and changing the word dot to a period.