Credit glossary
Credit bureau
A company that collects account information from lenders and others and sells credit reports; Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are the nationwide three.
Credit bureaus don't decide whether you get credit. They store what furnishers send, usually monthly, and release reports to companies with a permissible purpose. Each bureau keeps its own file on you, and lenders aren't required to report to all three, so the three reports and the scores built on them rarely match exactly. Federal law calls them consumer reporting agencies and treats the big three as nationwide agencies.
Your rights run against each bureau separately. You can get free weekly reports from all three at AnnualCreditReport.com, dispute errors with each one that shows them, and place a free freeze at each. A dispute or freeze at one bureau doesn't carry over to the others. Fraud alerts are the exception: the bureau you contact must notify the other two.
Guides that go deeper
- Why your three credit scores don't match, and when to worryYour Experian, Equifax and TransUnion scores come from three separate files updated on different days. What causes the gap, and when it points to an error.
- How to get your credit reports free, weekly, from all three bureausAnnualCreditReport.com is the only federally authorized source for free weekly reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. How to order and avoid fakes.
Sources
- What is a credit report?, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- 15 U.S.C. 1681a, Definitions, Legal Information Institute, Cornell
- 15 U.S.C. 1681b, Permissible purposes of consumer reports, Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute
- 15 U.S.C. 1681c-1(i): Security freeze, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
- Free Credit Reports, Federal Trade Commission
This is education, not legal or financial advice. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it.