The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 adds a new Section 624 to the Fair Credit Reporting Act which limits the ability of affiliated companies to use shared consumer data for marketing purposes.
Pre-FACTA Affiliate Sharing
By way of background, the FCRA as originally enacted permitted any company to share with any third party information relating solely to that company's firsthand experience with the consumer. By providing that such information did not constitute a "consumer report," a company could share its transaction or experience information with third parties without the risk of being treated as a "consumer reporting agency" under the FCRA by virtue of such sharing.
Since the "consumer report" exception was limited to transaction or experience information, affiliated companies continued to be subject to the risk of being treated as "consumer reporting agencies" if they shared other consumer data with each other that fell within the FCRA's definition of a
