Many people have expressed concerns about hidden credit checks that are being performed on their credit, damaging it by having too many credit checks in a short period of time and adversely affecting their ratings. A lot of the hidden credit checks are showing up in junk mail that consumers in the United Kingdom are receiving, prompting the Information Commissioner Office (ICO) to launch a consultation campaign looking into these junk mailers that may contain checks or prize drawing entries that forced a credit check to be done on the consumer. ICO is a watchdog organisation that is in charge of promoting access to official information and protecting consumer's personal data from things such as identification fraud and hidden credit checks.

According to James Jones at Experian, one of the major credit reference agencies used around the world, a hidden credit check showing up on a person's credit rating could hurt your chances of getting a mortgage, personal loan, or credit card, especially if your credit is a borderline decision in the first place. Lenders will see you as a high risk if you have too many credit checks on your record. "Consumers do need to know what's going to happen to their details when they send them off. When a lender checks your credit report, the evidence, or 'footprint', of that check is there for 12 months. Regardless of whether you were accepted or not (or even if you I not apply for a loan), the credit check or application will show up," Jones explained.

Mail order catalogue companies are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to using hidden credit checks, telling consumers that they are finalists in some lottery only to draw them in, check their credit and possibly even having a credit card the consumer may not even want opened up in the consumer's name. While this information is required to be in the fine print of mailings consumers receive, many people do not take the time to read it and suddenly find themselves with questionable credit scores after years of having good to perfect credit. Even though the companies argue that the terms are transparent, consumers argue that the information should not be contained in the fine print but somewhere else in plain sight.

The Information Commissioner Office agrees with angry consumers stating that companies that intend on running a credit check on a consumer who enters contests or reply to other offers should make it very clear what will happen when they receive the consumer's entry and other information. They have recently launched what they call the ‘small print, big print' campaign in an effort to get companies who use these types of techniques to attract customers into making their privacy and marketing statements much clearer and in a place that is not overlooked. The ICO is also consulting on new best practices for ‘privacy notices' in an effort to make them standard across the board.

According to an ICO spokesperson, "In cases where the consumer is faced with a credit account being opened, it would be preferable to explain, in clearer language, that they will be credit-checked. If companies are not making it clear when they are credit-checking people, this is a concern as these checks will stay on people's records. We would encourage all companies to spell out that a credit check is taking place."