Inquiries hampering my efforts

[kade6767]

I actually just finally got my credot file cleared after years and years. That's good and bad. Good because I have nothing negative but bad because I have nothing at all. I was just approved for a Cap One card with a $500CL. I was happy about that. But I show so many inquiries that I have not made other than the Cap One. In fact, when I was trying to verify my identity with a company, all the questions that arose from my credit file were not even mine! So of course, they could not verify anything. I am afraid that my report is either getting pulled up under someone else by mistake or someone may just be using my number. I have an alert on my account as well. Now, do I need to have this alert changed and do I just send it a dispute with letter to the agencies regarding the inquiries that show? When I say it's taken me years to clean my credit, I don't just mean a couple, I mean this is 20 years worth of work and I will not let something ruin it again for me now. One ex wife in a lifetime was enough for that, LOL!

[llecs]

I'd pull all 3 reports and study the hard inquiries carefully. If 100% certain it isn't yours, then I'd start with a police report if you haven't done so already. A police report will aid you in removing the inquiries and will also come in handy if anything else were to pop up in the future. I'd keep the fraud alert in place.

[RobertEG]

The CRA makes the assumption that any party reporting information or a permissible purpose to obtain your CR is truthful.

Just disputing without doucumentation in support of no permissible purpose wont slice it. 

And disputes related to inquiries are specifically exempt from the direct dispute process.

So the dispute process is most likely not the way to go.

In recognition of the problem with supporting an assertion of something not yours, the FCRA is structured to handle situations such as yours where you essentially would have to prove a negative... i.e., whatever purpose they provided was not on a transaction authorized by you, or on an account of yours. 

The statute accepts an assertion that any information does not relate to an account/transaction of yours provided you are willing to put it in the form of a sworn police report, which carries criminal penalties for knowingly false statements. 

In exchange for reducing your assertion to a police report, the FCRA provides for blocking of the alleged identity theft information from your credit report under FCRA 605B.

Fraud alerts give some protection against further identity theft, but dont address items already reported.

If you wish to pursue identity theft as a cause of the inquiries, file a police report, send it to the CRA, and get them blocked under FCRA 605B.