Consumer complaint received 2025-07-24 00:00:00
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Improper use of your report — Credit inquiries on your report that you don't recognize
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: AL

Complaint narrative:
Equifax is currently reporting multiple hard inquiries on my credit report, all of which were made without my knowledge, authorization, or consent, and none of which were tied to any application I initiated. These inquiries, dated within a two-day span in XX/XX/year>, appear to be clustered around XX/XX/year> and XX/XX/year>, and involve entities I have never directly interacted with in any capacity that would justify access to my credit file. 

Specifically, my Equifax credit report shows unauthorized inquiries from XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX, all dated XX/XX/year>, as well as inquiries from XXXX & XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, and XXXX, all dated XX/XX/year>. I did not apply for credit with any of these institutions on or around those dates. I did not initiate any transactions that would grant them a permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to access my credit report. These inquiries were conducted without my consent, outside of my control, and represent a serious breach of privacy and legal compliance.

Equifax is required by law to ensure that only entities with a permissible purpose, as defined under 15 U.S.C. 1681b ( f ), are granted access to a consumers credit file. There is no permissible purpose when there is no application, no inquiry, no business relationship, and no consumer authorization. By allowing these inquiries to appear on my credit file without any verification or oversight, Equifax has failed in its legal responsibility under 15 U.S.C. 1681e ( a ) to maintain and enforce reasonable procedures to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive consumer data.

When I disputed these inquiries through Equifaxs dispute process, I received the standard canned response stating that the inquiries were accurately reported. What I did not receive was any proof of authorization, no credit application, no acknowledgment of who pulled the file, or what purpose they supposedly had. Equifax did not provide any documentation from these furnishers showing a signed application, nor any proof that these inquiries were legally justified. This is not a reinvestigationit is a negligent dismissal of a legitimate privacy violation. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681i ( a ), Equifax is obligated to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation of disputed information. Simply confirming that the inquiry exists in the system is not verification. It is compliance theater. 

The impact of these unauthorized inquiries is not theoretical. My credit score dropped after this cluster of hard pulls was added to my file. I was flagged by lenders for excessive recent inquiries, denied a credit limit increase, and subjected to higher interest rates because of activity that should have never been allowed in the first place. These institutions accessed my private credit data without legal cause, and Equifax enabled it by failing to vet or validate the legitimacy of those requests. 

I take my credit and financial privacy seriously. The fact that Equifax continues to allow institutions to pull consumer reports without verifying purpose, and then defends the reporting without evidence, is unacceptable and dangerous. It violates the core protections that the Fair Credit Reporting Act was designed to enforce, and leaves consumers like me exposed to both reputational and financial harm with no recourse.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation