- Key insight: The CFPB said credit repair firms are using mass-generated, AI disputes to clog the system and get lenders and credit bureaus to delete legitimate debts.
- Supporting data: The CFPB has adopted mandatory two-factor authentication, identity and address verification, and a requirement that consumers exhaust standard dispute processes before filing with the bureau.
- What's at stake: Consumer advocates have warned that the new bureaucratic hurdles will make it harder for everyday Americans to get help with a credit dispute.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday announced major changes to its consumer complaint portal as part of an ongoing effort to reduce the number of AI-generated and duplicative complaints, and to crack down on abuse by social media influencers and credit repair firms.
The bureau plans to purge its backlog of past consumer complaints and make other changes to reduce the overall volume. Complaints have doubled every year since 2023. The bureau received 6.6 million complaints in 2025, up from 3.2 million in 2024 and 1.6 million in 2023.
Consumer advocates said the changes
The CFPB's changes include two-factor authentication for consumers and a new portal manual for companies with changes to administrative codes that allows lenders to handle frivolous complaints and reduce the number of those that are AI-generated. The bureau said it is trying to standardize data to ensure consistency across the industry.
"The consumer complaint portal has long been plagued by issues that severely limit its effectiveness in addressing consumers' complaints and [the] practical utility of its information," the CFPB said in
As an example, the CFPB said that last year it received 5 million complaints about credit reporting agencies or lenders, a 3,700% increase from 2019, when it received 150,000 such complaints.
The flood of disputes comes amid efforts by consumers to get debts wiped off their credit reports.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate and resolve a consumer's dispute, with another 15 days if the consumer submits new evidence after an initial dispute has been filed. If no action occurs, a negative item gets dropped from the credit report.
The upshot, the credit bureaus say, is that they have been inundated with so many complaints that legitimate debts are being dropped from credit reports, since the bureaus cannot respond quickly enough within the legal time frame.
"It's clearly an attempt to bog down the system, because if [the credit reporting agencies or their lenders] don't complete the investigation in 30 days, they must remove the trade line from the credit report, and then your score goes up," said Dan Smith, president and CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association, a trade group representing the credit bureaus. "They're saying I don't owe this trade line, when the reality is they do."
This week, the CFPB gave the credit reporting agencies and lenders high marks for making changes by closing complaints in consumers' favor.
"Amidst this record complaint volume, the nationwide consumer reporting agencies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — reported making more updates and deletions to inaccurate tradelines than in prior years," the CFPB said in its press release. "In 2024, the NCRAs closed more than 1.3 million complaints with non-monetary relief. In 2025, that number grew to 2.1 million."
During the Biden administration, the CFPB said that credit reporting agencies and lenders had provided no credible evidence that credit repair companies were behind the increase in complaints. But the CFPB under the Trump administration has been receptive to hearing from the industry and making changes.
"Consumers have every right to complain," said Smith, of the Consumer Data Industry Association. But consumers need to file complaints directly to a credit bureau, which is a separate, legal process, if they have a dispute with any tradeline or credit account listed on their credit report, he said.
The CFPB also sought to ensure that credit bureaus are able under the FCRA to identify complaints that they consider to be "frivolous," including AI-generated or duplicative complaints.
"The system is broken and they need to fix the system so that the consumer who needs assistance gets it," Smith said.
To that end, the CFPB in February added
The CFPB also began telling consumers to wait 45 days after filing a dispute with a credit reporting agency before filing a complaint with the CFPB. In addition, the bureau for the first time began requiring citizens to attest to the truthfulness of any complaint and to provide personal information, so the CFPB knows they are a real person who can be identified.
