I say (write) again, the FTC is a pretty awesome website. Here’s a good article on how to recognize credit repair scams. The article highlights these signs:

You’ll know you’re encountering credit repair fraud if a company:

• insists you pay them before they do any work on your behalf
• tells you not to contact the credit reporting companies directly
• tells you to dispute information in your credit report — even if you know it’s accurate
• tells you to give false information on your applications for credit or a loan
• doesn’t explain your legal rights when they tell you what they can do for you

The fine folks at the National Consumer Law Center recently posted a great article concerning the impact of the mortgage crises of 08 and beyond on consumer credit reports. It’s well worth the read. I’ve included some excepts below that really leaped out at me:

Credit reporting has become the determining factor for many essentials in a consumer’s financial life – not only credit (mortgages, auto loans, credit cards) but insurance, employment and rental housing. It is no exaggeration to say that a credit history can make or break a family’s finances. The Big Three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) stand as gatekeepers – and solely profit-motivated ones at that – to many economic essentials in the lives of Americans.

More disturbingly, credit reports are used for other purposes, such as employment, rental housing, and insurance. Thus, the damage from a foreclosure or other adverse mortgage-related event could cause a consumer to be denied a job, lose out on a rental apartment after losing his or her home, and pay hundreds of dollars more in auto insurance premiums. The cumulative impact of these financial calamities could strand a consumer economically for years after the foreclosure itself. It could create a self-fulfilling downward spiral in a consumer’s economic life.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the use of credit reporting is its use as a proxy for “character.” There is a popular conception, not just in the credit industry, but also among employers and the average layperson, that a poor credit score means that the consumer is irresponsible, a deadbeat, lazy, dishonest, or just plain sloppy. However, this stereotype is far from the truth. A bad credit record is often the result of circumstances beyond a consumer’s control, such as a job loss, illness, divorce, or death of a spouse, or a local or nationwide economic collapse.

There are good debt buyers. The website Strike the Debt (motto: “you are not a loan”) runs the Rolling Jubilee project.

The Rolling Jubilee is project of Strike Debt where we buy debts for pennies on the dollar. But instead of collecting on that debt like a debt collector would, we just abolish it.

So instead of trying to profit from you debt, Strike the Debt and the Rolling Jubilee are freeing you from it.

Consumer Reporting Agencies recently changed the way it reports credit card payments in order to identify “revolvers,” card holders that routinely carry an outstanding balance on their accounts. As explained by Money Talks News:

“In the past, your credit file displayed your monthly balance, your credit limit and whether you failed to make at least the minimum payment,” CreditCards.com says. Now Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are listing historical payment data — the amounts you actually paid, going back as far as two years ago.

The new information will tell lenders whether you’re the type of consumer who carries a balance from month to month and racks up interest charges — a “revolver” — or the type who usually pays in full, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says. That, in turn, helps lenders know how risky you are, and could affect the credit offers you get.

What it won’t do, at least for now, is affect your credit score, the Post-Gazette says. Anthony Sprauve, spokesman for the widely used FICO score, says it will take time to see if the new data reliably predicts whether people pay their debts.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/credit-reports-now-show-more-222856056.html