FAKKO Score
If you purchased your credit score from anywhere but myFICO.com, then it’s a FAKKO score (sometimes spelled FAKO or FACO). FAKKO (as in Fake-O) is an un-official term that describes any credit score that’s not a FICO score. The industry calls them “educational scores”.Many credit score monitoring services that claim to sell consumers “Fico” scores are actually selling their own version of Fico, which is anything but Fico.
These scores do not reflect your real Fico score. They can be off by more than 100 points, and are not well correlated. This makes them practically worthless, or even worse – misleading.
The score that your potential lenders see in their system is what determines their lending decision and the terms you get. Even if you purchase your official Fico score from myFico, it is still not the same score that your lenders see because they use a special version of Fico that is not available to consumers (See Understanding Fico Scores for more information).
This should not deter you from using FAKKO scores. An educational score can be a powerful tool to understand and improve your credit score. As long as you understand the limitation of these scores there’s no reason not to use free services that offer them.