Consumer complaint received 2022-03-12
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: FL
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Information belongs to someone else

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2021, a debt collection was reported to my Equifax credit report by a collection agency seeking to collect a debt from an insurance provider. I had never held an account with the insurance provider. Upon reporting potential fraud on this account to the insurance provider, their fraud department determined that this debt belong to another person who shares my same First & Last Name, same Date of Birth, but with DIFFERENT Middle Name ( and thus different middle initial ), did NOT provide ANY Social Security Number, has a different Drivers License Number and who lives in the same State but at an address that has never been linked to accounts or credit under my name, an insurance policy on a car that I have never owned. Yet just because the First Name, Last Name, State and DOB matched, that was enough for Equifax 's system to permit a collection agency to place this debt to my credit file. After mant calls and letters sent to the insurance company, the debt collector and Equifax, I was able to successfully remove it from my account, but it is time and stress I will never get back. My expectation was that Equifax would require vital info such as Social Security Number, Drivers License, correct Full Name, address etc to properly verified before letting any issuer pull my credit or any debt collector place a collection on my file. The burden of proof should be place on the issuer or collector to sufficient information to identify the CORRECT person and prove the account or debt belongs to them. 

Months after this incident, Equifax yet again permitted an issuer to pull a hard inquiry on my credit file and an account was almost opened if not for MY intervention calling the issuer to report fraud upon receiving a credit monitoring alert about the inquiry. In this second incident, only First Name, Last Name, City, State and Zipcode match, nothing else. No social provided, different Drivers License, different DOB, different StreeXXXX Name and House Number, different phone number, different email address. I included more details on this matter in a separate complaint. 

Equifax must improve their policies & procedures, make sure issuers and debt collectors need to provide sufficient info to fully verify the true owner of the account or debt, and make it impossible for a issuer or debt collector to change a credit file with just a matching name and state, or name and DOB. At least a social security or license number should be a minimum, plus a cross reference with existing credit file info to see if address phone number etc matches. If insufficient info is provided, Equifax system should cause an error on the reporting system side to alert the issuer or collector to enter additional info to properly verify the true owner. Randomly assigning it to someone else with simply the same name should not be permitted.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation