Equifax, and the free reports most people forget to use

In 2017 Equifax lost the personal data of roughly half the adults in the country and, in the settlement that followed, agreed among other things to give every American six extra free credit reports a year for seven years, through 2026. It's on the CFPB's own entry for Equifax. I have asked a great many people whether they've used one. I have met two.

This is the second of three on the big three, and Equifax is the strange one, because the credit report is the least interesting file it holds on you.

The three databases

The credit file is the one you know: accounts, balances, inquiries, public records. Pull it free at AnnualCreditReport.com, weekly, and pull the six extras through Equifax directly if you want a copy that doesn't count against anything.

The Work Number is the one you don't know. It's Equifax's employment and income verification database, fed by payroll providers, and it's where a mortgage lender confirms your job and your salary without calling your boss. If it has the wrong employer, an old salary, or a job you left three years ago as current, your income verification comes back mismatched and the underwriter asks for pay stubs, tax transcripts and a letter, and the file waits.

NCTUE is the third — the telecom and utilities exchange, which Equifax operates. I wrote about it in March. The modem story.

Why one company matters

Because a dispute is a dispute with a database, not with a company. Correcting your Equifax credit file does nothing to The Work Number, and nothing to NCTUE, even though the same corporation holds all three. Each needs its own request and its own letter. The CFPB entries for each carry the request path.

Where Equifax errors sit

Public records and collections. Equifax was historically the bureau most likely to carry a civil judgment or tax lien after the others dropped it, and it's the one where I most often see a paid collection still showing a balance. Compare against the other two; where two agree and Equifax doesn't, the dispute writes itself.

Next: TransUnion, the bureau that decides the middle score more often than you'd think.