Introduction -

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was enacted to promote the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of information maintained by Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRAs). In addition to imposing duties on the CRAs, it requires furnishers of information to provide accurate and complete information to the CRAs and to investigate any consumer disputes regarding the accuracy of that information. Increased claims of identity theft by consumers have given rise to more disputes that accounts are not accurately being reported as belonging to those consumers. These “identity theft” disputes put furnishers in a difficult position. In order to investigate and respond to these disputes, furnishers must determine whether or not the consumer opened the account, and correspondingly, whether or not to change the reporting on it.