credit report errors nightmare

[Anonymous]

So I'm 22 year old and my credit is already in hell from errors. First I found it a bit strange when I tried to get Dish TV in my first apartment in college only for the receptionist to tell me that my credit check came back saying I was 29 instead of 19. 

After checking it out, I found that my birthday was misreported. And this wasn't a simple number error my birth year went from 1989 to 1979 And immeadiately upon turning "18" there were credit cards taken out in my name. I assuemd that when the birthdate was corrected it would be obvious that I couldn't have taken out these accounts, but now they have corrected my birthday but will not remove the false credit cards.

Also I can't contact the company directly because most of the charges are so old the companies don't even exist anymore. One company sent me a 'correspondence' from me that htey said they recieved. I recognized the handwriting as my mother;s and when I confronted her about the issue she claimed that the card wasn't supposed to be in my name, I was just a 'secondary authorized user.'

What am I supposed to do?

[RobertEG]

You have apparently been the victim of use of unauthorized use of your name by another to establish credit in your name.

The normal way to handle that matter is to initiate identity theft actions under the relevant provisions of the FCRA, which permits you to access to the business records of each such credtior, and blocking of the identity theft related information from your credit report.

To initiate those protections of the FCRA requires that you first file a police report, attesting to the potential identity theft.  Are you prepared to initiate such actions if the party is apparently a family member?

[Revelate]

I'm not coutenancing fraud under any circumstances, and what was apparently done does warrant some sort of action, but out of curiosity are these fraudulent tradelines reporting as positive or negative accounts on your credit report?

If they're negative, you don't have any real choice except to follow Robert's advice, or to simply wait for them to fall off... which I really wouldn't do as that's a possibe long-term penalty depending when the dates were.

If they're all positive though... well... all I'm saying is you have options which may not involve opening up a can of legal whoop-ass on your mother which is a hard road to go down.  You should still shutdown the accounts in any case though and get your own, and I think your mother has some splainin to do beyond what's already been stated.

Good luck, my parents were not saints, but this is one problem I never inherited fortunately.

[AndySoCal]

Are the accounts in question resporting as authorized user.?  You can tell by the ECOA code which will be either I for individual or A  for authorized user. or J for Joint