who's making inquiries on my credit??

[Tom_Mi]

I have a few showing up, but I'm not applying for new credit.

I can obviously see the generic company name: "acme credit services", but how can I find out what local person is digging up dirt on me?

[Flamingo]

You are seeing places that do soft pulls on your credit reports to see if you may qualify for them to send you credit offers. Some target groups of people who may have a lot of bills or fall into various categories (i.e., you may all of a sudden get hit with offers of bill consolidation if you have a lot of bills). You would need to contact all three agencies to "opt out" of allowing that to occur.

Hard pulls occur when you apply for credit and sign a credit application allowing the creditor to pull your credit reports.

[frogger]

And the soft pulls do not have any impact on your credit score. Only the hard ones do.

[Tom_Mi]

cool. My wife is looking for work so I was paranoid that prospective employers were querying her credit without authorization.

thx!

[Flamingo]

cool. My wife is looking for work so I was paranoid that prospective employers were querying her credit without authorization.

thx!

An employer will do that only if she signs an employment application and provides her social security number, and it is stated in the application that the employer may, among other things, review her credit. That would be a soft pulll and the date of the pull would coincide around the time of any job application she may have submitted. Otherwise, prospective employers cannot pull credit reports with her authorization or her social security number.