idmd wrote:
As a quick aside I pulled my FICO using myFICO's service and it gave:
TU = 764
Eq = 765
These are consistent with the TU/Eq websites - does that mean these are my actual scores?
Also, I mentioned when I went to the TU website it looks like they pulled someone else's inquiry data as none of my real inquires were reported and a bunch that I've never had were (other websites that report TU's inquiry results were accurate). How should I go about this? I don't think there's anything fraudulent as they are all >1 year old. Should I contact TU to be sure?
I share your frustration per your FICO scores. Seems like I read on wiki once that there were over 2,000 different credit scoring models out there. Moreover there are different score ranges from FICO's classic 300-850 to VantageScore's 501-990.
There's a finite number of places you can get your FICO score:
TU: your lender, myFICO.com, and transunioncs.com (note the -cs).
EQ: your lender, myFICO.com, and Equifax.com (EQ and FICO partnered up).
EX: effective last February, you can no longer pull your own EX FICO score. You can get it from your lender or if you happen to belong to a CU in PA called PSECU, then you can see it on your monthly bank statement.
Any other score pulled from any other source is not a FICO score, but rather a fake score we affectionately call a FAKO score.
It is sheer coincidence that the score pulled from TransUnion's website matched your actual TU FICO score (unless you went to transunioncs.com). In fact if you go to transunion.com you'll see a promotional link in the middle, just to the right of that smiling couple. To the right of that you'll see a link for "credit scores". If you click that and scroll to the bottom, you'll see this in the greyed-out fine print:
"TrueCredit is not connected in any way with Fair, Isaac and Company; the credit score provided here is not a so-called FICO score."
The score they sell via transunion.com is actually called a TransRisk score. It can go up while your FICO goes down, and vice versa.
Each CRA (except for EQ) sells a competing score to not only generate more revenues but also drum up support by lenders to capture some of the market away from FICO. A great example is the annoying freecreditreport.com commercials produced by Experian. Those aren't FICO scores, but PLUS scores. Unfortunately for the competition, their scores are so unreliable per predicting risk that lenders generally won't even use them.
Per your inquiries, if any of them look fishy, but are over one year old, then I'd sit tight. Inquiries over 1 year old, even if reporting, have no impact on your FICO score. However, I would pull your CR directly from TU and you will be able to see the demographic info and specific info on each inquiry. If you see anything fishy that may indicate ID theft, then you may want to consider a freeze for your CRs. If I saw weird things over 1 yr old, then I'd probably do nothing. If I saw recent activity that I know doesn't belong to me, then I would place a fraud alert on each report.
