Highlights

Influence: Media, Search engines
What to believe, and what not to believe. Yahoo!'s score: F, 40%. Google's score: F, 40%. MSN Live Search's score: F, 30%.

Get your credit score. Get the FICO score. Byzantine, ambiguous, confusing. Hucksterism: The Fake-O flim-flam. The very few ways to get the authentic FICO score— the one lenders use most often. Score simulators. AnnualCreditReport.com, the official site for the federally-mandated free credit report. FCRA FACT ACT credit score price. Congress follows up on the progress of implementing the latest law. Price comparison. Not a sales pitch.

Improve your score PhD not required. Pay on time and don't over-extend. Horse-sense and the simulators. Links to advice on improvement from the scoring company, itself, the national credit reporting agencies (credit bureaus; consumer reporting agencies), GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, real estate agents, the federal government, consumer advocates and the press.

The FICO score
The main credit score. The one lenders use. Definition of FICO score. What it, actually, predicts. Its prominence. Its prevalence in mortgage lending. Fair Isaac and the credit bureaus' battle to keep the credit rating secret and the law federal legislators passed that allowed a decade of secrecy. Names: BEACON, EMPIRICA, FICO Risk Score/Classic. The 50 million with no risk score. Key to a better credit score and long-term success: Gaze into the middle distance and increase your savings. FICO fun facts.

What is the credit score rating scale and range?
Fun with numbers. Credit scoring company contradicts itself. The medallion. Grand, inaccurate proclamations of the scale by various characters treating it like a readheaded stepchild. A real hoot.

What is a good credit score?
Folly. Varied opinions from far and wide: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (aren't those just the cutest names for big, important, esteemed companies?), regulators, government, industry, experts, journalists, consumer groups, academia, non-profits, car dealers, blowhards.

What is the average?
Hard to explain with Fake-Os littering the market-- quite a hoax. The 678 credit score myth. FICO score distribution. Groundhog Day. Median (723) vs. mean. Scores in the secondary mortgage market. 13% have an 800+.

FICO score factors
What's in the sausage? The official list and the more complete unofficial list.

Credit checks (inquiries to a credit file; pulling a credit report)
The effect of a mere inquiry-- somebody performing a check of your credit record (for instance, a lender accessing your credit report). The special treatment of mortgage-related and auto-related inquiries. FICO company bows to pressure and adjusts its formula. Consumer fear of score dropping by hopping around shopping with no stopping and lenders popping in on their credit report and bopping their credit score; whether to fret about it or not.

Perspective How credit scores work. What they are, who creates them, who sells them, and a short history. Contracts that prohibited consumers from getting their credit scores. The one, prominent brand, and other, far less successful ones. Media impact— for better or worse. Government-sponsored enterprises and government response to startling saving statistics. Saving: Not only a significant factor in loan approvals, but a missing crucial personal finance component that gives consumers a way to make it through a calamity without damaging their credit scores.

Other scores
Would-be competitors of the omnipotent FICO. Other scores for other uses. Marketplace confusion. Fake-O FICO Funk.

Letters to credit bureaus
A year of correspondence about secret credit scores.

"Check out the web site http://www.creditscoring.com/letters/equifax.htm for some interesting reading." - a Federal Reserve Bank vice president

Press releases
The quick story. creditscoring.com beginnings.

Media influence: Lying
Suggestion to ask creditors to lie to credit bureaus: The so-called "goodwill adjustment." CBS, MSN, Dow Jones, et al. Anarchy. West Virginia Attorney General's office falls for it, too.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia's errors regarding credit scores. Rumors and the source of the misunderstandings. Fake-O 678 myth. Consumer reporting agency.

History of getting your credit report score
You couldn't always just jump online and download them. In fact, you couldn't get them at all. Consumer reporting agency Equifax releases BEACON in 2001. TransUnion 2002. Experian 2003. Before that, in defiance, E-LOAN released FICO scores— only to have its credit report service shut off for doing so. 2001 email from E-LOAN.

Mortgage loans and credit scores Lending guidelines, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, mortgage insurance.

News and updates

All the messy details, year-by-year, in black and white, but mostly gray. First communication with inside the bunkers, 1997. A strange history of a secret credit report score, and then, Superbowl advertising.

2008

5/02 - Experian and Equifax on pre-employment. Same as TransUnion and ChoicePoint: No scores.
4/24 - Influence: Government. Credit scores. Pre-employment screening. Reports vary.
4/04 - (get the real story, first, at creditscoring.com) Fake-O FICO Funk: New York Times correction
4/02 - Happy Birthday VantageScore (age 2). Your lawsuit continues.
3/18 - Wikipedia, style before facts
3/16 - Fannie Mae credit score chart
3/09 - New York Times misleads readers.
2/08 - FICO 08

2007

12/18 - Influence: Media, search engines. Third contestant.
12/02 - Influence: Media, search engines. Second contestant.
11/16 - Influence: Media, search engines.
11/05 - FICO 08 held hostage; Day 36.
10/23 - Get your credit score. Get the FICO score.
10/14 - Influence: Media, Wikipedia, two errors in one sentence
10/02 - Influence: Media, lying, challenge
9/29 - Influence: Media, Wikipedia falsehood
9/22 - Influence on credit scores: Media, lying
9/20 - Improve: Secured credit cards
9/06 - Media: Scary
8/30 - Fake-O FICO Funk: More dupes. Sanity in the mortgage market.
8/27 - New: Mortgage lending.
8/24 - Fair Isaac comment on 678 myth. CBS questioned.
8/18 - Advice on CBS: Lying. Experian first with FICO 08. Misinformation: Fake-O, Wikipedia.
8/06 - Capital One caves.
8/02 - Misinformation: Consumer Federation/WaMu/WaPo/et al. Insurance scores.
7/30 - Equifax breaks the law. 10 years ago.
7/23 - Misinformation: Consumer advocacy organization and bank.
7/22 - Myths & misinformation. More lawyer high jinks.
7/19 - Quirks debut. Authorized user volume.
7/13 - Funk/Debunk. CR report. Contestant: Money. Tweedledum brags.
7/09 - Fake-O FICO Funk debut. Begging.
7/03 - Fun with Numbers, hired guns, settling, confusion. YouTube scoops C-Span.
6/29 - Equifax inquiry (credit check) type non-disclosure. Congressional hearing.
6/18 - Authorized user change consequences
6/14 - Supreme Court, TransUnion thin-file credit score
6/07 - VantageScore killed authorized user before FICO
6/04 - Fair Isaac to negate authorized user gambit
5/31 - FICO system adjustment, White House, Hillis/Slack class action
5/18 - Score tweak, subprime blame
5/02 - Authorized user tradelines
4/24 - FICO Forums
4/17 - Bloggers' score trends
2/05 - Supreme Court, Non-traditional credit, DOJ on VantageScore, Flipper show
1/28 - WaPo, Max, Equifax.