Your credit card company, bank, and car and home insurers have a secret in common.
They all report information about you to a repository, or use information from a repository to evaluate you — or both. (Yes, they can and do do all that without even telling you.)
The good news is that you can find out what they are reporting about you to, or learning about you from, those repositories.
Consumer reporting companies maintain those repositories. And you can learn everything you need to know about consumer reporting companies and the data they collect and share from a handy guide made by the federal government — which was recently updated for 2025.
The data collected and shared by consumer reporting companies can impact almost every aspect of your finances. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) explains:
“In the United States, personal financial data is used by a variety of entities when making lending, banking, employment, and housing decisions. Some less obvious entities that use personal financial data include casinos, phone companies, volunteer organizations, government agencies determining eligibility for assistance programs, debt collectors, and insurance companies.”
Some consumer reporting companies even collect information about you from your social media accounts and share it with your potential future employers.
Others collect driving behavior data and sell it to car insurers — who use it to determine whether to offer you insurance and how much to charge you for it. (You can learn more about this in “Some Cars Now Snitch on Drivers — and It Could Jack up Your Insurance.”)
And then there are the consumer reporting companies devoted to logging your medical conditions and prescription drug purchase history.
In short, you need to know what’s in the consumer reports that these companies keep on you because it could cost you.
Know your rights with consumer reporting companies
The CFPB stresses that you have the legal right to:
- Obtain a copy of your consumer reports. Under federal law, consumer reporting companies are required to give you the information in your reports if you request it. They can charge no more than $15.50 for reports requested in 2025, although many must provide them for free.
- Dispute inaccuracies in your consumer reports. Requesting corrections to your reports is critical to rectifying errors that may cost you money or that resulted from identity theft.
- Block third parties from accessing your consumer reports. Some consumer reporting companies are required to put a security freeze on your reports if you request it — at no charge to you. This prevents many entities from obtaining copies of your consumer reports — and is something that the CFPB says you “should seriously consider” doing unless you are currently seeking new credit, such as a loan or credit card.
How to use the consumer reporting companies list
The CFPB’s list of consumer reporting companies — called “List of Consumer Reporting Companies” — names these businesses, grouped by type. It also tells you exactly what kinds of data each one tracks.
Most importantly, the list includes contact information for requesting a report from or disputing an error with a company. It also specifies the circumstances under which you can get a report for free or freeze a report.
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