Myth 1: Information on your credit report cannot be changed.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires information on your credit report
to be changed if it is misleading, inaccurate, outdated or cannot be verified.

Myth 2: Credit bureaus are required by law to keep derogatory
or negative items on your credit report for 7 to 10 years.
There is absolutely no requirement by law that the credit bureaus report anything about you at all. Credit bureaus are private companies for profit that make their income by collecting and selling your personal information.

Myth 3: Paying off your old debts will remove
negative information on your credit report.
Paying off old debts only changes the status of the account from “unpaid” to “paid”.  Paying them off will not remove the account from the report, and in many cases it does not help increase your credit score either.   

Myth 4: I can repair credit myself.
Yes, you can. The challenge is that most people are not aware of their legal rights, or do not know the proper way to dispute an account and can end up causing more harm than good.  It is possible to hurt your scores and credit report by trying to repair it on your own.