In practice, banks and big corporations often pull out credit reports without a "permissible purpose". I am not talking about the "soft inquiries" you are talking about. Soft inquiries are made on regular basis for your creditors and don't hurt your credit score..."Hard inquiries" do, and mean some one is using your identity to take a loan or buy a house (horse,boat,diamond) under your ssn. These debts will come aftr you later if you don't protest. This crime is known as "Pretexting". FTC site explains it well.


In theory, is a difficult task. Reality check: corporations and banks are the true customers for the credit agencies, not us, the people. Have you noticed credit reports are almost always full of errors? What a coincidence! The lower our score is the higher interests we have to pay onour loans. Self-explanatory, self-evident.