equifax wrote in part, the date of birth is not part of the credit file, a more in depth credit file does not exist. that means a child born right now could have a light or gas bill put in his name within a few weeks. legally victims by defect don't have to pay bills racked up in their name but parents of children with utility debt don't see that it way. >> i was too young clearly this was not me. >> because the name on the bill was me and it was done to help my family. >> keisha agrees. she also knows how difficult it was to clean up her credit history and shake free of debt while in her name didn't really belong to her. >> nobody's going to forgive you for that, not in this world. >> i want to say it's a five to ten years. five to ten years because i was fixing my own debt. it was fixing this debt that was following me. it's a common practice and we don't always talk about it because it's often something we're not proud of but it is how we survived. >> survive the pressures of soaring utility bills shrinking incomes and the desire for a second chance. >> and that's our show for tod

experi experian, equifax, transunion, they all have credit scores, and you can get a credit score for free from credit karma.com, and even some credit companies now are allowing you to get a free credit score. so discover, american expres barclay. >> is there a limit to how many times you can ask, or do you ding your credit score by asking too frequently? >> when others ask for your credit history and do a run on your credit history and get the score, if you get a lot at one period of time, that can be something that can be slightly negative to your report. but that's really not what goes into what makes up your credit score. what makes up your credit score is really your payment history. d what hurts you the most is not paying your bills on time. >> or not even having credit. if you don't have credit credit cards. >> exactly. >> if you get your score, your report, and find an error, how do you fix it? i'm heard nightmare stories. >> first thing, go online and see what's there. and you can actually onli there tell them you want to dispute something you see on the report. you also want

analyst jill schlesinger joins us now to explain how the new practices by transunion, experion and equifax help consumer. good morning, jill. how are you? >> reporter: well. how are you? >> all good on a thursday. i guess these changes stem from a legal issue. tell us about that. >> reporter: well, back in the spring, the three agencies agreed to a settlement with the state of new york. but basically they said if we are going to do it in new york, we have to do it nationwide. so this week it's phase 1. next couple of phases will be implemented over the next two years. so what's changing? well, the format of credit reporting. that's a little formulaic. but also some of the practices. so what's interesting, this new change prohibits credit bureaus from accepting authorized user credit reporting on newly opened credit cards unless they have the issuer providing a date of birth. what does this mean to you? the issuer was providing names but no dates of better and screwed up the information and now, the credit bureaus can link the accounts to the correct file. >> what's new about how the agenci