The first thing that you need to do in order to check your credit report, is to get a recent copy of it first. It is also equally important that you check your personal credit report rather than the one that is provided to businesses as your personal credit report is designed for you to read and understand it better as well as contains some information that is not made available on the ones meant for businesses.
In order to know where to get your credit report, you can read the following 2 guides:
Getting your Free Annual Credit Report and Where to Check Your Credit Report.
Now that you have got your credit report, we need to discuss how to check it. In order to check your credit report, you will need to verify the information present on it. So let’s start with understanding the credit report and the information present on it. Your credit report will contain a wealth of information. It will contain personal details as well as the history of all your credit accounts. It will demonstrate how your credit rating may be getting affected from the information present, which accounts are positive and which are negative.
Check Your Credit Report for Personal Information
The first section on your credit report will most likely be the personal information section. In order to check this, you need to verify that the name, address, social security number and all other identity identifiers are recorded correctly. All variations ever reported to the credit bureaus will be recorded here. These variations could be the result of a creditor misspelling your name, address details, transposing digits in the social security number, you using a name variation during credit application ( such as John B. Seymour vs. John Seymour) etc.
You need to check this section of the credit report in order to determine that it is accurate. Credit bureaus maintain all variations reported to give you the chance to correct erroneous information as well as provide an identifier to potential identity theft, in case someone has tried to use your information by opening a new account with a different name.
Check Your Credit Report for Negative Accounts
The next section will have information regarding your accounts, including your payment history. On the some credit reports, this section will only contain the negative items such as late payments, delinquencies and information from public records such as tax liens, court judgments regarding debt and bankruptcy filing. You need to check this section carefully to see that all the information reported is accurate. You have a right to dispute inaccurate information and have it removed from your credit report. But it will be difficult to remove inaccurate information that is over one year old. This is another reason why checking your credit report frequently is a good idea.
Check Your Credit Report for Positive Accounts
The next section contains accounts that are in positive standing with the credit bureaus. These are active accounts that have never been late, closed accounts that were always current etc. Check this section to make sure that all your accounts have been reported. A missing credit card account or a mortgage account that is healthy can make a lot of difference to your credit score.
Check your Credit Report for Inquiries
Inquiries happen when you apply for credit and the creditor views your credit report for the purpose of evaluating your credit worthiness. Too many inquiries result in a drop in the credit score especially if they happen over a short period of time. Check your credit report to see that all inquiries have come from your creditors. Unsolicited hard inquiries could be a pointer to identity theft and attempted fraud.
Check your Credit Report for Additional Notations
You have a right to attach a statement whenever you are in disagreement with the reporting of a particular account and filing a dispute has not been able to solve the problem. You can attach a special note saying that you are not in concurrence with the information on the credit file. This will allow you the opportunity give further explanation to the creditor when filing an application for credit.

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