CREDIT HISTORY
If you ever apply for a charge account, a credit card, a car loan, a personal loan, or a mortgage, your credit experience or lack of it will be a major factor the creditor will consider in reviewing your request. It may even affect your ability to get a job or buy life insurance.
A good credit rating is an asset to be nurtured and protected. If you want a good rating, you must use credit with discretion: limit borrowing to your capacity to repay and live up to the terms of your contracts. The quality of your credit rating is entirely up to you.

WHO MAY OBTAIN A REPORT
A consumer report about you may be issued only to properly identified persons and for approved purposes. It may be furnished;
    1) in accordance with your own written request;
    2) in response to a court order; or
    3) to someone who will use it for a legiti­mate business need (for example, a potential
        credi­tor, employer, insurance underwriter, or benefit-granting government agency).
Your friends and neighbors who are curious about your affairs may not obtain information about you from a credit bureau. To do so might
subject the party who obtained it for them to fine and/or impris­onment.

CREDIT BUREAUS
Across the United States, several thousand credit bureaus collect credit information about consumers. Many of these credit bureaus are connected to centralized computer files that contain data on millions of in­dividuals. From these files a credit bureau can produce for a subscribing creditor, almost instantaneously, a re­vealing report about your past and present credit ac­tivity. Although they can op­erate in different ways, many bureaus follow the procedures outlined in this pam­phlet.

TIME LIMIT ON NEGATIVE CREDIT ITEMS
Most kinds of information in your file may be re­ported for a period of seven years. If you have
de­clared personal bank­ruptcy, however, that fact may be reported for 10 years.
After seven years or 10 years, the information can't be disclosed by a credit-reporting agency unless you are being investigated for a credit application of $50,000 or more, for an application to purchase life insurance of $50,000 or more, or for employment at an annual salary of $20,000 or more. In those situations, the time limits on releasing the data do not apply.
Nor do time limits apply if a creditor chooses to use prior adverse information in his files to
deny a new credit relationship.

INCORRECT INFORMATION
Credit bureaus are required to follow reasonable procedures to ensure that subscribing creditors report information accurately. However, mistakes may occur. Your file may contain erroneous data or the records of someone with a name similar to yours.
When you notify the credit bureau that you dispute the accuracy of information, it must reinvestigate and modify or remove inaccurate data. Any pertinent data you have concerning an error should be given to the credit bureau. If reinvestigation does not resolve the dispute to your satisfaction, you may enter into your file a statement of 100 or fewer words explaining why you think the record is inaccurate. The law, however, does not require a credit bu­reau
to add to your credit file a statement of circumstances that explains a period of delinquency caused by some unexpected hardship, such as serious illness, a catastrophe, or unemployment, which cut off or drastically reduced your income.
When applying for credit, you yourself should give this type of explanation directly to the credit grantor. The credit bureau must include your statement about disputed data or a coded version of it with any reports it issues about you. At your request, the bureau must also send a correction to anyone who received a report in the preceding six months if it was for a credit check, or within a two year period if it was for employment purposes.

WHAT YOUR FILE MAY CONTAIN
The credit bureau file contains your name, address, Social Security number, and birth
date. A lot of other information also may be included:

     Your employer, position, and income
     Your former address
     Your former employer
     Your spouse's name, Social Security num­ber, employer, and income
     An indication whether you own your home, rent, or board

And your file may contain detailed credit informa­tion. Each time you buy on credit from a reporting store or take out a loan at a bank, finance com­pany, or other reporting creditor, a credit bureau is informed of your account number, the date, amount, terms, and type of credit.
As you make payments, your file is updated to show the outstanding balance, the number of payments and amounts past due, and the frequency of your payments.
Your record may indicate the largest amount of credit you have had and the maximum limit permit­ted by the creditor.
Each inquiry about you may be recorded. (If a credi­tor sees a number of inquiries without any credit having been extended, then he or she may con­clude that you have been turned down.) Any suits, judgments, or tax liens against you may appear as well.