What does the new address discrepancy rule mean for employment screening?
Executive Summary
An existing section of the FCRA requires national credit bureaus to send address discrepancy notices to their users when the consumer's address that the user provided does not match the address on file for the consumer. This existing section only applies to credit reports, not non-credit consumer reports.
New rules supplement the existing FCRA section as of November 1, 2008. The new rules require the users to have reasonable procedures to resolve the address discrepancy when they receive the notices.
The FCRA only requires address discrepancy notices for credit reports. Therefore, users won't be receiving address discrepancy notices for non-credit consumer reports. Users don't need to design procedures for resolving address discrepancies for non-credit consumer reports.
Users do need to have procedures to resolve address discrepancy notices. In the employment screening scenario, the main duty is to confirm that the credit report actually relates to the consumer. In some cases, the user may also have to report the confirmed address back to the credit bureau.
A number of summaries available on the web fail to emphasize these distinctions because they are not tightly focused on employment screening. They are consistent if you read them closely.
FACTA
One of the main themes of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 was to reduce identify theft. One of the provisions intended to reduce the risk of identity theft is in FACTA section 315. It became 15U.S.C. § 1681c(h), which is FCRA section 605(h). Section 605(h)(1) is a statute that requires no regulations to come into effect.
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