I am hoping to address all of the previous responses with this one reply.
I currently have an extended fraud alert on my credit report and requested such over 4 years ago prior to the FACT Act legislation. When I make application for the extension oof credit from any creditor, that are required to contact me and ask me several questions about materials contained on my credit report (credit history). For example, do I have a car loan? If yes, who is the lender and what is the monthly payment amount?. Do I have mortgage? If yes, who is the lender and what is the monthly payment amount?. Did you recently open an account? If yes, with whom? Did you recently close an account? If so, with who?. The regulations states that you MUST verify enough infromation to ensure the person making the credit application is the same person that you are talking to.
The difference between the old "Fraud Alert" requirement and those in the FACT Act are:
1. Each credit reporting agency had their own procedures for handling identity theft and unfortunately, none were the same. The FACT Act requires uniform procedures across all the agencies (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax).
2. Prior tot eh FACT Act, there were a going number of Active Duty service men and women who were victims of identity theft. The FACT Act now requires the CRA's to put an Active Duty Fraud Alert on the credit files of all Active Duty Military personnel (as requested) for a perior of 12 months to assist military personal that are operating in harms way with some sort of credit protection.
3. Variosu states have legislation in place that would allow the residents of that state to obtain their credit file from all CRA's annually free of charge. For consumers that did not live in those states, you had to either pay for your credit file or be denied credit. This means it cost you money or hits to your credit score just to see what has been repoerted to the CRA. Additionally, statistcs show that at least 25% of consumers that have been denied credit over the past year were denied due to mis-information on their credit file. So with the FACT Act, ALL consumers can receive a copy of their personal cerdit file from all 3 CRA's annually by simply requesting a copy via mail, pohne or online at
www.annualcreditreport.com. Current those located in the western and mid-west regions may apply because congrass authorized a "rolling" roll-out by region.
4. Finally, there were various cases of mortgage lenders and brokers supplying consumer with false information about contained in their credit file so the lender and/or broker can charge higher fees or a higher rate (for greater return on the sale of the loan or greater YSP for brokers). So, congress also required mortgage lenders and brokers to disclose to the consumer their creditr score, the range of scores and the 4 reason why the score was what it was disclosed.
I hope this helps everyone. If not, let me know and I will try to type some more. But this chicken-pecking his starting to hut my fingers.