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I know that if someone does a "hard" view of your credit score, it will lower by a bit. So what is stopping a malicious person/organization from illegally viewing your score a thousand times just to hurt you? Can that happen?

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    A malicious company could report you as not paying your bills even though you don't even have a business relation with them. It might take a while for you to find out and it might be hard to convince the credit bureaus that this reporting was fraudulent.
    – Philipp
    Jun 17, 2015 at 14:23
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    This comment is better than the answers. Please promote.
    – Jeremy Stein
    Jun 19, 2015 at 21:04

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It costs money to pull credit information, and there's a record of who requested the info. And hard pulls are only a temporary, short-term ding on your score. Basically, if someone wants to make trouble, there are better ways to do so.

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  • A hard pull stays on report for 2 years.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica ♦
    Jun 17, 2015 at 9:49
  • I thought a hard pull required permission from the pullee (or a court order)? For example, when one responds to a "You have been pre-approved..." offer (which are based on soft pulls), one of the boxes that is checked ("I have read all the terms of this offer and accept them") is permission to do a hard pull on credit reports, investigate your financial condition otherwise (do you really have the income you claim to have), etc.
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Jun 17, 2015 at 10:31
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    @DilipSarwate if the US is similar to the UK then yes, a hard pull in theory requires permission from the subject but in practise the agencies don't routinely verify it so a malicious party could, in theory, pull your information without permission. If caught doing so they may face legal sanctions and/or find the agencies were no longer willing to do business with them, but they could do it.
    – Nigel Harper
    Jun 17, 2015 at 13:21
  • An example of a way a malicious person can hurt your credit score is to put false information on it. A previous landlord did this to me and it took quite some effort to fix it.
    – ChrisInEdmonton
    Jun 17, 2015 at 14:03
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People can and do intentionally hurt other people's credit scores all the time.

This is why there are so many services to get your credit report checked, because it is very possibly that somebody did use your social security number to get a mortgage on a house or a car or open credit cards you didn't even know about, or even collections efforts you didn't know about.

It is possible that organizations hard pulled your account multiple times and paid for it.

The deterrents are inadequate and ultimately leave you with the messed up credit worthiness, regardless if civil or criminal charges were levied.

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  • Intentionally???? Problems with your credit report are errors, not malice.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Jun 18, 2015 at 3:33
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    @LorenPechtel Identity fraud is malice.
    – CQM
    Jun 18, 2015 at 4:03
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    Most problems with credit reports are simple errors. Even identity fraud is generally just about making money, there is no intent to hurt someone.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Jun 18, 2015 at 20:54
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    @LorenPechtel I'm operating under the assumption that people know the consequences of their actions, but maybe there are people that genuinely believe identity fraud is harmless since there are ways not to get caught and ways for the affected person to mitigate disaster
    – CQM
    Jun 18, 2015 at 21:29
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    I'm not saying they don't know it causes harm. To me malice requires an intent to cause harm as opposed to harm simply being a side effect of what they intend to accomplish. In most cases I doubt they even think of the harm caused to the person whose identity is stolen.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Jun 18, 2015 at 21:30

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