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Hello,
I read recently that someone had some baddies removed on Experian, once the had some of their old addresses removed? Is there any truth to that and what kind of impact have you had removing old addresses?
What are the pros and cons to removing old addresses.
I cleaned up some old addresses on my CR. However the removal of those should not affect your TLs.
Thanks!
The primary use of addresses is as a matching criteria to assure any reporting they receive is matched with the proper consumer credit file.
When they receive any reporting, they have algorithms that use personal identifiers to match that reporting with and enter it into the correct file.
Their first use is of supposedly unique personal identifiers, such as SSN or tax ID However, if the SSN is, for example, a clerical typo that does not match with your name, they may use other personal identifiers, such as full name and current or prior address, to solve the matching problem.
Making sure that both your creditors and the CRAs have the same current address is thus primarily a safeguard against administrative file mis-matching.
I would imagine that prior addresses fall very low in file matching importance.
Thanks for responding! I will leave well enough alone.
@DaveSignal wrote:
TU will delete accounts if you delete old addresses associated with them (positive accounts too). I found this out accidentally, honestly just trying to get rid of a page-long myriad of old addresses. EX and EQ don't remove the addresses if there are associated accounts.
which accounts though? ANY?
@Whitneyy wrote:
@DaveSignal wrote:
TU will delete accounts if you delete old addresses associated with them (positive accounts too). I found this out accidentally, honestly just trying to get rid of a page-long myriad of old addresses. EX and EQ don't remove the addresses if there are associated accounts.
which accounts though? ANY?
IME, most of the accounts were already updated with my current address, so nothing happened to those. When there are closed accounts that reference an old address, EX will not remove the address unless you can prove that your records are merged with another person of the same name or that you are a victim of identiy theft. It is their policy. EQ makes it pretty hard too. I was only trying to remove some old PO box and forwarding addresses that no longer belong to me, but they still don't like to remove these. TU, in my case, just immediately removed the addresses when I selected the option to remove them in an online dispute. The result was that not only were the addresses removed, but also some closed accounts. I did not expect this to happen as it wasn't my intention to remove accounts, but I would guess that they remove anything that still references an old address. I can only see this happening for accounts that are closed and paid with banks that you no longer have current accounts with (ie: they don't have your current address), but, although I haven't tried it aside from this one accidental incidence, I think that TU will remove anything that matches, regardless of the account type.
I am not encouraging this method as a way to remove baddies. It only works on 1 CRA and has a good change of messing up your credit file.