Confidential credit information shared

LucyJW

My twin sister recently applied for a mortgage, and during the process was asked by her mortgage advisor to provide a copy of her credit report from a particular company that the mortgage underwriters were also using. It was discovered after receiving a copy of her report that credit information about me was included within the document. Information about my credit cards, car loan, my new address, etc. was all present. Obviously this is a breech of my confidentiality and is a data protection issue, as I did not give my consent for them to access this information or for them to pass this on to my sister. We want to gage whether it is worth either one of us, or perhaps both of us, making an official complaint and if so, who should this be directed to? Could this result in compensation, for the breech of confidentiality and/or the fact that the purchase of my sister's house nearly fell through due to the delay caused?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

JKSandy

You can complain to the information comissioner however they do not award compensation or seek to award compensation from the CRA's.

You should first complain to the credit reference agency to see what they say then take it from there.

Tixy

This is something that can happen quite often with twins, obviously you have the same date of birth and likely lived at the same address at some point.

It is an error that has been made, possibly be the credit reference agency, but also possibly by a creditor belonging to you. Once the link is created as an alias and the computer thinks you are the same person then other credit account data etc will appear on the one file.

Its usually fairly easy to get sorted by writing to the credit reference agency and explaining that you are two different people and are twins and they should be able to pick apart your files so you both have files with only your own data on.