Just because you settled with a car loan company after a car repossession, that doesn’t mean that they have to remove it from your Equifax, Experian or TransUnion reports.

The three credit reporting bureaus deal with a substantial amount of information daily. As a result, mistakes can occur on your credit report. By requesting and reviewing the free annual credit reports from each of the credit reporting bureaus, you can be on the lookout for errors that may exist on your report.

A FICO Score is a brand of credit score — FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corporation and Fair Isaac is the company that developed the software program used by the credit bureaus to compile and calculate credit scores for U.S. consumers.

A new credit scoring model will potentially boost scores for many credit applicants and help establish credit for millions of people who previously had little or no credit history. The new scoring model will be used in the latest version of the VantageScore, the credit score created by the three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

There are a wide variety of myths floating around about what you should and shouldn’t do to improve your credit reports and credit scores.