Hard Inquiry on Equifax that I didn't initiate

[dlister70]

Credit Karma sent me an alert today about a hard inquiry on my Equifax.  The only thing I've done lately is applied for a checking account at Chase, so I was rather annoyed that they somehow gave me a hard pull to do that.

When I checked the website, it was not for Chase but for Synchrony.

Syncb/ppc  National Credit Card Cos. and it was initiated yesterday.  

A little googling tells me that ppc stands for paypal credit, and I've not done anything with paypal in a long time.

I applied for a 90 day fraud alert at alerts.equifax.com, and I sent a dispute to Equifax regarding the hard pull stating that I didn't initiate it.

Is there anything else that I should be doing right now?

[Anonymous]

I would be calling Sync right away.

[dlister70]

I called PayPal credit and the automated line asked for my birth month and year, and the last 4 of my social. When I entered those, it told me my account balance! I have never applied for PayPal credit, but now I apparently have an account.

I spoke with a representative and filed a fraud claim with them. She said that the PayPal credit was linked to my PayPal account. She said that the phone number and email used looks like mine too.

So as far as they are concerned, it looks like the request came from me.

I’m assuming this means that someone was able to log into my PayPal account, so I changed the password on there. The representative said that they closed the PayPal credit, but now I have to wait for the fraud investigation to get it removed from my credit report.

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear you are making progress.  The takeaway here is to lean strongly toward working with the creditor first before filing disputes with a CRA.  The dispute process can often end with the creditor simply saying to the CRA, yep the account or record or inquiry looks valid.  Further disputes can be classified as frivolous at that point.

[RobertEG]

When evaluating whether an inquiry is proper, you should look broadly at what actions you have initiated to establish a business transaction, including but not limited to iniatiating a request for credit, rather than only as to whether you have authorized the inquiry.

The FCRA is specifically structured to avoid the need for consumer authorization for inquiries for their credit report.

FCRA 604 lists various permissible purposes that permit a party to obtain your credit report without any authorization or permission from you.

It is the purpose of the inquiry that grants the right to access.

Express consumer authorization is only required if the purpose is not one of the listed permissible purposes under section 604.

Thus, once you know who made an inquiry, the next step is to evaluate what actions you may have had with them that permitted the inquiry.

If you have had no dealings with them, then they likely had no permissible purpose.

[dlister70]

In this case, I have had no dealings with PayPal or PayPal credit at all. It’s been weeks or possibly months since I even logged into my PayPal account because I don’t use it anymore.

I stated as much in the letter that I faxed and mailed to them. Hopefully they can see the IP address that applied for the credit and be able to determine that it wasn’t me from that.