Anniversary Seal

The Equifax data breach exposed the personal information — home addresses, Social Security numbers, etc. — of 143 million consumers.

Errors made to your identity information (wrong name, phone number, address)

Accounts belonging to another person with the same or a similar name as yours (this mixing of two consumers’ information in a single file is called a mixed file)

Incorrect accounts resulting from identity theft

Closed accounts reported as open

You are reported as the owner of the account, when you are actually just an authorized user

Accounts that are incorrectly reported as late or delinquent

Incorrect date of last payment, date opened, or date of first delinquency

Same debt listed more than once (possibly with different names)

Reinsertion of incorrect information after it was corrected

Accounts that appear multiple times with different creditors listed (especially in the case of delinquent accounts or accounts in collections)

Accounts with an incorrect current balance

Accounts with an incorrect credit limit

Half or more of medical bills have a billing error, according to research from NerdWallet.

incorrect information on a credit report (74 percent)