Background check shows false info?

July 12, 2007 2:36 PM

New employer has done a background check - returns addresses I've never lived at?

All the info I have from the company at the moment is that the address has shown up on my social security number. I've checked my free credit report and I don't see anything out of the ordinary. What's going on? What do I do about it?

posted by anthropomorphic to work & money (10 comments total)

Run a tri merge (all 3 bureau) credit report and take a look at the addresses associated with your name. Anything you do not recognize needs to be investigated - also look for accounts or credit lines you do not recognize.

Very possibly ID theft.

Please post your findings so myself and other mefites can help.

Good luck.
posted by Carnage Asada at 2:48 PM on July 12, 2007

Have you checked credit reports from all 3 credit reporting agencies? Equifax, Experian, TransUnion.

The same thing happened to my boyfriend when he was submitting paperwork for his security clearance. Addresses where he had never lived showed up on one or two but not all three of the reports. I think Equifax was the worst one in terms of bad information. He has had a horrible time trying to clear it up. Equifax refuses to make any corrections because they consider the bad info to be "historical" (wtf?) and therefore, unchangeable.
posted by contessa at 2:50 PM on July 12, 2007

i just ran the annualcreditreport.com report on all 3, and i don't see anything that shouldn't be there.

this is perplexing and quite unsettling. i'm getting ready to apply for a bigass law school loan.
posted by anthropomorphic at 2:53 PM on July 12, 2007

Any inaccurate credit information needs to be backed up with proof as well as removed within 72 hours of research and reporting.
posted by Carnage Asada at 2:53 PM on July 12, 2007

Have the company provide YOU a copy of the credit report they pulled and take a look.

Do you have a common name? If so, this may be why.
posted by Carnage Asada at 2:56 PM on July 12, 2007

Carnage: "Any inaccurate credit information needs to be backed up with proof "

Are you saying that the credit-reporting agency needs to prove that you DID live there, or that you need to prove you DID NOT live there?

Proving a negative is tough.
posted by adamrice at 4:46 PM on July 12, 2007

They need to prove you did live there. You can't possibly prove you didn't live at every address in the country other than those you lived in :). And yes, as CA says, they have a 72 hour deadline to remove data that is false.
posted by luriete at 4:53 PM on July 12, 2007

"Background check" and "credit report" are not the same thing. People doing a background check might pull in data from a variety of sources, such as driver's license records, court records, utility records, voting records, and so on. Some[1] of this data is going to be garbage, mismatches, and so on. We've recently seen how easy this is to abuse when Republicans pushing for voter suppression used such records to deny many Democratic voters the right to vote.

I still remember when I first applied for a library card and was told that I already had one and couldn't have another, because there was someone, somewhere in the same library system, with the same name as I. Not the same address... not the same birthday... just the same name. A couple of weeks ago I got a bill from a bill collector about a debt that occurred so long ago that I would have been in diapers. Again, someone with the same name, not the same address, not the same birthdate, not the same SSN...

You might think that people would be aware of the possibility of false matches based solely on matching first and last names, given that there are only a few hundred first names and less than a thousand last names in common use. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

[1] A lot.
posted by jellicle at 5:10 PM on July 12, 2007

It could also show up in the Lexis Nexis report on you.
You can request a copy of that from here.
posted by yeoz at 7:39 PM on July 12, 2007

Seconding the same name thing. A co-worker was telling me yesterday that his dad's mortgage showed up as his when he applied for a car loan - they have the same name (no Jr., etc.).
posted by altcountryman at 9:36 PM on July 13, 2007