> these companies are committing slander against Americans and facilitating fraud en mass What slander? If credit information is inaccurate, you can have it ch

> these companies are committing slander against Americans and facilitating fraud en mass What slander? If credit information is inaccurate, you can have it changed. If they don't do it in a timely fashion, you can sue. (I won several thousand dollars a few years back for a tax lien on my report that wasn't even mine.) I'm no fan of credit bureaus at all, but "slander" is hyperbole and not even true (and it's an inaccurate word, when credit reports are written, thus the correct word would have been "libel" -- however, even accusing credit bureaus of libel is ridiculous.) To further dispute the claim that these companies "slander" people, one must look at what the legal test is for defamation. The company (or person) must have: 1. Published or otherwise broadcast an unprivileged, false statement of fact about the plaintiff 2. Caused material harm to the plaintiff by publishing or broadcasting said false statement of fact 3. Acted either negligently or with actual malice Credit bureaus don't publish or broadcast. Material harm has to be proven. There must be quantifiable damages. Just shouting someone's potentially inaccurate credit information from the rooftops isn't necessarily causing damages -- it's possible, but those damages would have to be proven. It's not negligent if a file is inaccurate -- it's negligent if they were presented with a challenge of that inaccurate information and refused to correct it. However, admittedly, the bureaus do seem to act negligent rather frequently when it comes to information accuracy -- however, negligence alone doesn't make a defamation case -- the information must be publicly released (i.e. broadcast or published,) and cause material harm. > and facilitating fraud en mass. ...and facilitating credit en mass... Without credit bureaus there would be a much more difficult credit market and it would be much more subject to discriminatory practices. A credit report can't be racist, but a local bank manager, making a credit decision based on "knowing you" is (and has been,) prone to discrimination and unfairness. The VP's golfing buddy needs a loan: "No problem, we got you!" While the immigrant business owner needs a loan -- a much more difficult proposition. America's economy is the largest in the world -- and contributing to that is the ready availability of credit. To be clear, I'm not defending credit bureaus from their numerous misdeeds. But throwing words around like "slander" or "fraud" is a childish view on the importance of credit bureaus to the American credit system.