Demographic Information

• The three credit bureaus all include demographic information on their reports, including your name and any aliases and alternate versions, like maiden and married names. Your reports also include past and present residences, telephone numbers and workplaces, birthday and Social Security number, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Reports on married consumers also include spousal information.
  
  

Account Information

• All of your credit-related accounts appear on your credit reports, including installment loans like your mortgage and any personal loans and automotive financing and revolving accounts like retail credit lines and credit cards. Your reports show details like the account opening dates, past high balance, current balance and available credit limit. Your file also includes current and late payments and indicates the length of any delinquency. Credit reports include any accounts charged off as bad debts and bills being handled by collection agencies, even if they are not credit related. For example, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax report medical bills that are turned over to debt collectors, according to Jay MacDonald of the Bankrate financial site. Open accounts show up indefinitely, but negative entries are purged in seven years.
  
  

Inquiries

• Inquiries resulting from your credit applications get added to your reports, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They remain in your records for one to two years.
  
  

Public Records

• The credit bureaus gather and report credit-related information from public court records, such as bankruptcies and judgments. For example, if a creditor or collection agency sues you over an unpaid bill and wins, that judgment gets added to your credit reports for seven years, according to the FTC. Bankruptcies remain in your records for a decade.
  
  

Personal Statement

• Most information on your credit reports comes from external sources and is out of your control, but you have a right to add your own input if you do not agree with something and cannot get it removed with a dispute. Federal law allows you to challenge mistakes on your reports with Experian, TransUnion and Equifax and forces them to complete an investigation within 30 days. The bureaus are obligated to remove data they cannot validate, but they can continue reporting the information if they believe the original creditor has verified it adequately. You can write a 100-word statement if you do not agree and have the bureaus add it to your credit reports to give your side of the story, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco explains.