Key Takeaway: Old accounts are automatically removed from your credit reports after seven to 10 years have passed, in most cases. But if those accounts aren’t going away, or if they weren’t accurate to begin with, you can remove them by filing a dispute with the credit bureaus.
You can typically only remove accounts from your credit reports if those accounts are listed in error. Those errors include accounts that haven’t fallen off of your reports when they should have as well as accounts that aren’t yours or are inaccurately reported. To remove an error, you’ll need to submit a dispute with each of the credit bureaus that has the error on its report.
Accurate account information, good or bad, won’t otherwise be removed until it falls off of your credit reports on its own, typically after a seven- or 10-year waiting period. Even so, the impact of any negative marks on your credit generally fades over time, well before it’s removed automatically.
If you’re not sure whether an account was reported incorrectly on more than one report, you can find out by using Credit Karma to check your credit reports from TransUnion and Equifax, two of the three major credit bureaus, for free.
- Ways to remove accounts from my credit reports
- What types of information can be removed from my credit reports?
- How does removing an account from my credit reports affect my credit scores?
- What’s next? Checking your credit reports
- FAQs about removing information from credit reports
Ways to remove accounts from my credit reports
In general, there are two ways that accounts are removed from your credit reports: the account ages off or you file a dispute with the credit bureaus. Here’s a breakdown of each method.
Wait for the account to age off of the reports
Your credit reports don’t list every detail of your financial history forever. Information on your credit reports will automatically be removed after a certain period of time. Here’s how long it typically takes common types of account information to age off of your credit reports.
- Foreclosures: 7 years
- Past-due payments: 7 years
- Hard credit inquiries: 2 years
- Chapter 7 bankruptcy: 10 years
- Chapter 13 bankruptcy: 7 years
- Accounts in collections: 7 years
- Closed accounts with no balance due: 10 years
- Closed accounts with unpaid balance: 7 years
You and anyone else who checks your credit will see this account information on your credit reports until it falls off. But that negative information will impact your credit scores less and less as time goes on.
Take hard credit inquiries, for example. They stay on your credit reports for two years. But after the first year, FICO credit-scoring models won’t factor them into your credit score at all.
File a dispute with each credit bureau
Credit bureaus rely on lenders and other creditors to report information about your debts, and sometimes they get it wrong. You might have duplicate accounts listed on your credit reports, for example, or another person’s debts may have accidentally been added under your name.
If you have legitimate grounds to request an account be removed from your credit reports, you can formally dispute it by following these basic steps:
- File a dispute with each credit bureau that lists the error. You can do this online, over the phone or by mail. You’ll need details about the incorrect mark and why it’s a mistake, along with any documents you might have as proof.
- Contact the creditor who supplied the information. It’s not required, but you can also reach out to the creditor and notify it of the mistake, too.
- Wait for a response. Credit bureaus have between 30 and 45 days to investigate each claim and get back to you. Watch for any communication from the credit bureaus in case you need to provide more information.
- Check to see whether it’s been removed. Regardless of what the credit bureaus decide, it’s good to check your credit reports again after the dispute process is over. If they agree to remove it, you’ll want to verify that. If not, you can at least add a note to your credit file, explaining things for any potential future creditors to see.
What types of information can be removed from my credit reports?
Removable account information generally falls into these different categories:
- Accounts that should’ve aged off of your reports
- Accounts you’ve never opened
- Accounts you’ve closed that were incorrectly marked as closed by creditor
- Duplicate accounts
- Payments that were incorrectly reported as late
- Hard credit inquiries you didn’t authorize
- Inaccurate debt balances
- Incorrect personal identification information like your name or address
Some of these, like seeing accounts you’ve never opened or hard inquiries you didn’t authorize, could be signs of identity theft. If you notice these signs, file a report with identitytheft.gov.
How does removing an account from my credit reports affect my credit scores?
Removing an account from your credit reports can help your credit scores or hurt them. It might have no effect on your credit scores at all, depending on the type of information you’re disputing.
If you’re removing negative information, like a defaulted loan that’s inaccurately listed on your credit reports, it’ll likely help increase your credit scores. With fewer negative marks holding your credit scores back, you can often expect a positive increase in these cases.
But if the information is positive, removing it could cause your credit scores to decrease. If you spot a paid-off loan in your credit reports that you never actually took out, for example, removing that positive information could erase an artificial boost.
But it’s still important to report these errors in case they’re a sign of fraud, which can cause bigger problems in the long run.
What’s next? Checking your credit reports
A key part of any financial checkup is to go over the accounts listed on your credit reports and remove any that don’t belong there. Make sure every account — and every piece of data attached to that account, like individual payments — is accurate. Double check that accounts aren’t being listed past their expiration date, either.
You can view your Equifax and TransUnion credit reports for free through Credit Karma, and you can get copies of your credit reports from all three bureaus from annualcreditreport.com.
The information on your credit reports gets compiled into credit scores, so be sure to check those, too. You can see your VantageScore 3.0 credit scores from TransUnion and Equifax for free with Credit Karma.
If you spot anything on your credit reports that shouldn’t be there, file a dispute with each credit bureau that lists the incorrect information.
FAQs about removing information from credit reports
If the account reflects accurate information, you’ll need to wait seven to 10 years for it to fall off on its own. But if that time has passed and they’re still listed, or if those accounts are mistakes, you can file a dispute with the credit bureaus to have them removed.
Credit bureaus keep closed accounts on your credit reports because lenders want to see how you’ve managed debt in the recent past — lenders consider this a good indication of how you’ll manage it today. But if you see an account listed that you closed more than seven to 10 years ago, it’s likely an error.
Old accounts naturally fall off your credit reports after a certain period of time, typically between seven and 10 years. If you still owed money on the account when it was closed, it’ll usually be removed after seven years. Accounts that you paid off in full stay on your credit reports for 10 years.