If there was ever an industry in dire need of oversight and regulation- it has to be the credit reporting industry. For years, these credit reporting agencies have worked in the shadows gathering information without permission. They have little or no oversight with regard to the activities they engage in. They have no regulation other than themselves. I know of exactly nobody who publicly advocates on behalf of the citizen consumers they report on. The murky workings of creditors, collection agencies, and inherent mistakes, leaks, and flaws in their work- coupled with the absolute quirky nature of how a credit reporting agency arrives at a credit "score" is a mystery of Loch Ness proportions. My first run in with these agencies occurred in 1987. I would work up loans and run credit reports. Time and time again, I found myself trying to sort out what was accurate and what was not. If you had a common name, say Susan Smith, you might literally have all sorts of derogatory entr...