So you’ve heard the rumors, being added as an authorized user to a credit card doesn’t actually help your score anymore. Well…shoot, that’s too bad, but wait a minute, what? Can you still be added as an authorized user onto someone’s card? Yes. Does that data go on your report? Yes. So…yeah. We at Boost Credit 101 don’t want to get political, but the fact is, saying AU’s don’t help your score is Fake News. It’s not like someone at a bank can take a look at your score and say, oh, but you have these AUs there, this is what your score would be without them. Nope. AU history is just as valid as it always was. There are whisperings that FICO 8 discounts the AU influence, but from what we’ve seen, it’s just not the case. You take a blank report and put a single AU on it, and it will cause the score to generate usually well into the 700’s. Does that mean there’s a difference between FICO (or real) score and tradeline credit score? No. They are the same thing.
Does that mean you can buy a house with just an AU tradeline or two on your report?
Maybe, but likely not.
Let’s think common sense, would you lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone based on a score they achieved by piggybacking off of someone else’s credit? That’s like letting someone into Harvard because they’re best friends with someone who gets straight A’s. This isn’t to discourage you. It’s an extreme example, but tradelines are best used intelligently, and that means sometimes, they aren’t used alone. You can, however, get approved for credit cards and auto loans with just AU tradelines. We’ve seen it. So, is that even within the letter of the law?
Can Buying Tradelines Help Your Credit and Are They Legal?
The first question, yes. The second question, yes, as long as you are using AU tradelines. Buying what are called “Primary tradelines” are illegal. To be very exact, the people who are selling them are breaking the law. This means that primaries, despite what you hear, are not the best tradelines to buy. The best way to get a primary: get approved for one yourself. Okay, so you are now convinced that AU tradelines are as good as primaries, right? Well, maybe not if a human is looking at them. If it’s a computer, it likely doesn’t matter, so where’s the best place to buy tradelines? Anywhere you can actually trust the seller. Does the seller have reviews you can check out, a contract, do they hold your money in escrow until the contract is complete? Those are the kinds of questions you want to ask. And always remember, the best tradelines are the trade lines that post, and post to your social security number, not a CPN?
So, What’s the Relationship Between a Credit Privacy Number and Tradeline?
A CPN is where you pay someone to generate a 9-digit number that you use in place of your social security number. It’s blank and if you put tradelines on you will get a great score. The problem with CPNs is that they are felonious. The Fair Credit Reporting Act states that any number used for a loan that is not issued by the SS Administration is against the law. But besides that, you’ll never be able to get a house with a CPN, so it’s always better to post credit tradeline to a ssn.
The reason it’s always better to post to an SSN is that you may spend a fair amount of money and buy tradelines for CPN, and most of the time, you’ll have a pretty credit score, but like a beautiful ship with no engine, it’s not really going to get you anywhere. The best way to look at it, to use an overused term, is: credit sweep, tradelines, and funding. A credit sweep is just a fancy phrase that means cleaning the negatives off. Once you clean the negatives from your SSN, you can add the tradelines, and then you’re ready to apply for funding.
