Significance

• Before the FCRA was passed, you had no recourse if your credit report was inaccurate. With its passage, you now can review your credit reports annually and call those errors to the credit reporting company's attention. Furthermore, you can now review your credit history before you apply for a loan. That way, you will know your history ahead of time; and if improvements in your history will make a difference, you can begin making them.
  
  

Types

• There are only three companies in the US that accumulate your credit history and sell that information to your potential creditors. They are Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. They receive information from many sources, then they establish a credit score for you based on it. Per the law, you can request your credit history from each of them every twelve months, free of charge.
  
  

Size

• Over 95 percent of companies in the US routinely send your payment history to the three credit reporting agencies. They include credit card companies, utilities and retailers, to name three. Virtually everyone in the country has a credit history that the credit reporting agencies make available to others.
  
  

Effects

• If a potential creditor receives a negative credit report from any of the three companies, you will be negatively affected. First, you may not be granted the credit you requested, or the interest rate you will be charged will be higher based on the report. Thus, it is very important that you check your reports for errors that may negatively impact your score.
  
  

Warning

• Because of the tremendous amount of information the credit reporting agencies receive, it's natural that errors do occur. That's all the more reason to check on your rating annually to see if it has been affected by inaccurate information. Furthermore, identity theft has become an epidemic, and false use of your credit information will be reflected in your credit report. The sooner it is discovered, the faster you can deal with its consequences.