 TITLE: What Can’t You Dispute on Your Credit Report? CONTENT: What Can't Be Disputed on a Credit Report?\n------------------------------------------\nFirst things first: If you see something on your credit reports that is patently incorrect or that you believe is the result of fraudulent activity, you should file a dispute to have it corrected or removed. There are, however, credit report entries that are traditionally indisputable as they are either a matter of factual record or important personal information.\nCredit inquiries are an example of credit report information that is generally not disputable. A credit inquiry is simply a record of access to your credit reports or contact information that can happen when you apply for a credit card or loan, check your own credit, or are preapproved for a credit product, among other instances. An inquiry is a matter of fact, and Experian is required to provide this information to you as a record of activity.\nBecause you have the right to see who has accessed your credit reports and on what date, disputing valid inquiries via the dispute process is not a normal practice. Of course, if someone has applied for credit in your name without your permission, the resulting hard inquiry can be removed via the dispute process in cases of demonstrable fraud.\nIf you do have valid inquiries on your credit reports, you should know their impact to your credit scores is minimal, if they have any impact at all. Soft inquiries, which are not the result of a credit application, have no effect on credit scores. Even hard inquiries, which are the result of an application for credit or services, don't always have a measurable impact on your credit scores.\nIf there is an impact, it is normally very minimal, and the credit scoring models created by FICO® and VantageScore® do not consider them at all once they are older than 12 months. Inquiries alone will not generally cause you to be declined credit—there are always more significant factors involved.\nThere are other items that cannot be disputed or removed due to their systemic importance. For example, your correct legal name, current and former mailing addresses, and date of birth are usually not up for dispute and won't be removed from your credit reports. This information, commonly referred to as personally identifiable information, or PII, is important as it allows the credit reporting companies to match credit information in their credit file databases to the correct consumer's credit reports.\nFinally, you cannot dispute your credit scores. Your credit scores are a product of sophisticated algorithms proprietary to FICO®, VantageScore and other score developers (often including lenders themselves). They are not a component of your credit reports but are, instead, numbers generated by the credit scoring models based on the information as it appears in your credit report at the moment it is requested. Because they are not part of your credit report, they are not disputable. END