Credit Reporting Websites - Choosing a Reliable Provider
If you are currently looking for a website to provide you with credit reporting or monitoring services, our advice would be that you do so with great care and caution. Whilst the majority of websites out there offering credit score services are highly reliable - there are always the odd few which do nothing to add to the reputation of the industry on the whole.
How Identity Theft Can Affect Your Credit Score
We've all heard of the impending threat of identity theft, especially in today's modern electronic world. Whenever we hear the term, we automatically think of people sitting in a dark room, in a far away country - counting the pennies from people who they have successfully scammed.
Credit Scorecards - What Are They and Who Uses Them?
Don't mistake a credit score for a credit scorecard - they are not the same thing. In this article, we will take a look at the difference between these two things - both of which are reports - but both of which serve a different purpose.
Controversy over the Credit Scoring System
For many years, a number of consumers and businesses have been up in arms over the current functioning of the credit scoring system. For whatever reason (we will go in to this shortly), people have been somewhat offended by the fact that in its raw form, a credit score is basically plotting you against the rest of society - giving lenders and financial institutions an unfair (and often unjustified) insight in to your spending and transaction history.
This controversy has been addressed a number of times by industry leaders - those credit agencies which profit from creating and generating the numbers which you know as your credit score - and often the responses have been sub-par.
Addressing the Issues
In this article, we will look at the main reasons why the FICO credit scoring system in particular has come under so much fire recently, and we will also look at what is being done to ensure that the system is fair and equitable in to the future.
The Major Concern with Credit Scores
When it comes to credit scores, the biggest concern of many consumers is that they will be unfairly disadvantaged in the future, due to their actions in the past.
For example, many consumers will point to records on their credit report such as:
- Unpaid parking fines.
- Unpaid utility bills.
- Unpaid / disputed invoices.
These are the common areas where credit reports often do, physically affect consumers in a negative way. Unfortunately, there is very little that you can do at present - aside from starting a dispute resolution process - to wipe these entries totally off the radar.
And this presents the problem. What if it genuinely wasn't the consumers fault? What if these entries were made in error? Clearly, something needs to be done to ensure that consumers are treated in a better way, instead of just being another statistic on the books, in the future.
What Is Being Done To Make Credit Scores Fairer?
There are a number of things in the pipeline at the moment which could potentially make the credit score system fairer in the future. However, these changes are quite a way off, and they will take a long time to implement in the mainstream system.
Hence, the best strategy for now is to keep on top of your credit score, and monitor any changes if and when they do occur.