Originally passed in almost 40 years ago, the Fair Credit Reporting Act was created with the goal of getting consumer reporting agencies to operate in a way that is fair to individual consumers while still fulfilling the needs of lenders and others who use your credit reports. The Act set out to accomplish this by ensuring the information recorded in credit reports is accurate, relevant, kept confidential, and only provided to others under specific circumstances. It is the Fair Credit Reporting Act that laid the foundation for consumer's ability to fix their credit.

The area of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that credit correction primarily focuses on is the accuracy of information in your credit reports. This is the one aspect where the responsibility of ensuring fair credit reporting lies with the individual. With the other three, it is the credit bureaus that are accountable for the types of information they include in credit reports, how this information is kept secure, and which third parties have access to it. But with the issue of accuracy, the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not force the credit reporting agencies to make sure information is accurate when it is initially included in your credit reports. Instead, the Act gives you as a consumer the ability to question the information in your credit reports, making it your responsibility to make sure the information the credit bureaus have added to your credit reports is an accurate and fair representation of your credit worthiness.

Many people, including a number of which count themselves among this nation's credit experts, miss this concept. They get caught up on the strict definition of inaccurate credit listings and don't see the broader concept of fairness that the Fair Credit Reporting Act is truly about. They persist in preching that consumers are only able to dispute items that are patently inaccurate even though modern case law has amended the idea of inaccurate negative items to also include items that are untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (collectively known as "questionable" items).

Your credit score is generated using the information recorded in your credit reports. If you do not feel your credit score is an accurate representation of your true credit worthiness, it is your privilege and your responsibility to work to correct this. Disputing the questionable negative items in your credit reports with the credit bureaus is the method made available by the Fair Credit Reporting Act for you to enforce your right to fair and accurate credit reporting.

Lexington Law helps clients dispute the questionable negative listings in their credit reports as well as providing additional credit repair services extending beyond credit bureau disputes. In 2008, Lexington Law's clients saw over 600,000 negative items removed from their credit reports.