I just received my free credit disclosure from Transunion. I received one from Equifax a few weeks ago. Equifax shows that I have no outstanding debts and the only two inquiries are the soft ones I recently made to the two agencies. Transunion shows a hard inquiry from 9 years ago from a company I do not recognize. I phoned them today and they told me that a minimum of six hard inquiries are kept forever and that inquiries do not go away after three years unless they are at the back of the line and you make 7 new hard credit applications. Under the heading “account review inquiries” (soft), there are 54 inquiries from CBV Collections services Ltd. (one was/is made every week since they began a year ago). I have never authorized any company to perform a credit check on me for almost ten years and I do not know who CBV… is. I called Transunion and they told me not to worry since they are soft inquiries that do not affect my credit score. I told them that my concern is that they are mining my personal information on a weekly basis without my consent or knowledge. Transunion told me to phone CBV and ask them “why” they are breaking the law and doing this. CBV wants to know a whole lot of personal information about me “to confirm my identity” before they will talk about this. Because they are already breaking the law by stealing my personal information, I will not voluntarily give them any information on the phone that they haven’t already stolen. For all I know they could be organized crime running a scam to obtain peoples identity for identity theft reasons. Transunion asked me a whole lot of personal questions too, for the same reason, to confirm my identity, and after a great many questions, told me that their computer was satisfied as to my identity. I told them that since they have confirmed my identity, and since I have told them, in their recording of our conversation, that I do not know who CBV is, nor have I given them or anyone else permission to access my report, and after they had confirmed that I do not have any unpaid debts listed, that they must refuse any further requests by CBV to obtain my credit report. They told me that they do not have any mechanisms in place to block further requests! I said, “If I requested a report on somebody, would you guys just give it to me?”, and they said no. So, they clearly can refuse to give somebody a report.
So, I’m thinking that requesting my credit report is illegal, unless they have my permission, however, there doesn’t seem to be any way to enforce that law.
I’m also thinking that accessing my credit report every week for a year constitutes harassment.
I’m also believing that their reason for accessing my personal information is to keep tabs on when I either apply for credit, or receive some, or perhaps new employment, for the nefarious purpose of then using the new information to contact new creditors and disclosing personal information and their personal views about me in a slanderous way, that I’d never know about. This too seems likely illegal.
Transunion, and Equifax should be responsible for verifying permission to access an individuals credit report when it is pointed out to them that that permission does not exist. They should also have a policy in place that prevents anyone, especially collection agencies, from “hammering” on a persons credit history.
It is Friday night where I am and I can’t contact consumers affairs etc… until Monday.
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