Nearly 25% of the credit reports carry errors.
Errors occur due to the following reasons;

• Identity theft involves creation
  of new accounts in your name that appear in your credit report.

• If your name or address was entered or read incorrectly to pull your report.
• Due to common names for example, if two people have only the middle name different like Adam J Smith and Adam R Smith.
• Social security number or other information was given or entered incorrectly while pulling out a report.
• Information at the bureaus is entered incorrectly from your application.
• If you apply for credit at a bank where a person of same name is already registered. His credit information might also show up on your account.
• Payment was sent to the wrong account.
• In case of a married couple, one spouse's social security number is entered instead of the other. This causes merged credit reports and also results in the calculation of wrong scores.
• In cosigning the bank might use the social security number of the wrong person.

How to resolve these Mixes and Errors

To resolve the errors and the mixed credit reports the creditor will take the reports form the three bureaus. These are then matched to find out conflicting information. The credit reports from the three bureaus are described as follows.

Equifax:

The merged mortgage credit reports are very complicated. In case of a mix Equifax has two reports Equifax 1 and Equifax 2. the report contains the score of each of these two files. Only in case that a person used two names were used by the same person like first name and at another place last name then the final score is calculated by summing up the two scores and dividing them by two. In case of a father and son this mix also results due to same name or address. Sometimes consumer keep pulling reports via monitoring services which results in a large file. This credit report is automatically split into two containing the consumer accounts.


In such a mix Equifax must be sent a written
request to remove such a credit repomix to avoid any future problem.

TransUnion:

In TransUnion report information other then any additional security number, names, addresses and erroneous accounts can be seen. You can write to them to get these errors removed.

Experian:

In an Experian credit report any additional information like names, addresses, accounts, which doesn't belong to the consumer can be seen. The consumer, on seeing any information that doesn't belong to him is required to write to the Experian and attaché a copy of his driver's license to get his credit report unmixed.



It also happens that there is an additional security number other than the consumer himself number on the file. This can also be unmixed upon request.

Conclusion

Creditors can quite easily mix your credit report with any other person. Only certain specific set of things are used to pull out a report which results in errors. It is therefore advised to get your report and check it for errors. If you are applying for a credit you should get your credit report well before the application submission to eliminate any errors which may cause a credit denial.