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- Life Events and Credit
  
  Find out how life events affect your credit and how to build good credit for the major purchases in your life.
- Preventing Fraud
  
  Learn the warning signs of credit fraud, and get the credit information you need to protect yourself. Are you already a victim? Experian can help.
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  What are credit scores, and how are they calculated? Get the answers to your credit score questions.
- Credit Reporting
  
  Improve your credit by understanding basic consumer credit information: what’s in a credit report, how to check it and how often you should review it.
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Inquiries

While credit inquiries may have a negative impact on credit scores, inquiries alone will never cause you to be declined. Negative information will invariably have a greater impact on scores than credit inquiries. Recent credit inquiries, however, concern creditors because they may indicate you have added debt they don’t know about yet. That’s why you often are asked to explain recent credit inquiries when you apply for a mortgage. The older the inquiry, the less important it is.

Your creditors only see credit inquiries from transactions you initiate. So credit inquiries resulting from preapproved credit offers aren’t provided to creditors. Because people shop for the best rates when making a home or auto purchase, credit scoring systems count inquiries for those reasons that occur with a short period of time as only one inquiry.

Credit Reporting

Improve your credit by understanding basic consumer credit information: what’s in a credit report, how to check it and how often you should review it.
Credit Scores

What are credit scores, and how are they calculated? Get the answers to your credit score questions.
Preventing Fraud

Learn the warning signs of credit fraud, and get the credit information you need to protect yourself. Are you already a victim? Experian can help.
Life Events and Credit

Find out how life events affect your credit and how to build good credit for the major purchases in your life.
Credit Advice

Ask Experian

Get credit information on the hottest topics from Experian’s team.
Preapproved Credit Offers

What’s in a credit report, how can you check it and how often should you review it? Make sure your credit information is accurate and check your Experian, Equifax and TransUnion reports side-by-side with Experian’s 3 Bureau Online Credit Report.
- Mailing Lists and
  Preapproved Offers
- Opt Out
FAQs
Glossary of Credit Terms

Credit 101

Personal Services