Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

NOTE: It is possible to freeze access to your employment data here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

That being said, it doesn't stop employers from continuing to hand Equifax your data on a gold platter, and therefore does nothing to protect you from the inevitable data breach that will result in Equifax being required to give everyone affected $0.36 or one year of free credit monitoring.

I checked earlier today and yep, my employer is selling my data and future earnings potential to the company that is infamous for poor data security.

A confounding factor is that as a hiring manager, and at least for all the hiring decisions I have been involved in, I know we did not use this to check candidates. So what's the upside?

EDIT: ADP Workforcenow appears to do this automatically. I'm curious to find out if anyone in our company even knows it is happening. I will find out soon enough, as this is definitely a hill to die on.

Very interesting, I didn't expect the accuracy and detail in this data.

All of my pay from Intel, Google, Facebook is in here. Qualcomm apparently did not report.

Also, Google (my latest employer) pulled the data just before I started working, after giving me an offer. My credit card company pulls the data every month, sometimes 2-3 times per month. Several mortgage originators have also pulled the data even though I have not gotten a mortgage (I probably filled out a form on their website).

I guess I'm okay with credit card companies monitoring this, but I'm not sure I am okay with potential employers having access to this. Is it even legal in California for them to read this information? Maybe it was legal at the time but not any more?

Can confirm it is 100% correct. Employed in Washington and California. All numbers were correct for the ones I cared about - more or less. They missed three jobs and the dates were fucked up for a few - but is pretty upsetting. Definitely should be illegal.

They even had pay period dates and everything for my current job. Including dates I was doing 401k. Like - what the fuck - why is my employer selling that information? It's a big tech company, of course. You could even see when my RSUs were vesting. The hell!

Funny enough - the only ones who have been looking at my data are Credit Karma. Maybe I should delete my account with them - lol. I use them for taxes because they are free.

A few years ago there was a startup called Paysa. You searched by employer and it showed you the salaries of each job title. My company was small enough that it made it easy to see the salary of many of my employees. We did not initially understand where that data came from. I did not leak it. We put together that each leaked salary was of someone who had recently applied for a mortgage or auto loan.

Read the fine print next time you attach a paystub to a loan application. They are likely selling your data to aggregators.

Salaries are not a secret.

Ergo, as employees... Share your salaries.

Knowledge is power and if the only entities that have power from knowing salaries are your employers then you have no power.

And for people hiring, make hiring decisions that are defensible, equal, and would survive full transparency. Act as if every employee is already sharing salary info, for if they aren't today they will be soon.

Note that QuickBooks will now contribute to this data unless an employer explicitly opts out. I had to bring it to my employer's attention when they first rolled it out. Most small businesses that use QuickBooks won't have heard of it and will be contributing salary data by default.

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-artic...

I've used this before as an employee. While it may also be a bulk dataset of employment information (which any HRS or payroll provider would have), the ostensible use of this solution is, to quote their homepage, "credentialed verifiers with permissible purpose access to income and employment data".

Key words there are credentialed and permissible purpose.

In other words, it's an automated way for me as an employee to have my employer verify my employment and/or salary information—not necessarily both—without having to hunt down someone in HR. This is particularly useful for previous companies where I no longer have access to internal systems.

I have used it most commonly for mortgage applications.

I can log in and generate a one-time or limited-use code to provide access, and select which data I want to provide access to. I then provide that key to the third party, who verifies with Equifax.

How does this work in California given that employers cannot ask for a candidate's salary even through an agent? Does this not qualify?

Effective January 1, 2018, Labor Code section 432.3 prohibits an employer from, either orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, asking any information concerning an applicant’s salary history information, which includes compensation as well as benefits. [1]

[1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/california_equal_pay_act.htm

If people are upset their employers are selling this information to Equifax, you know it would be a fantastic thing that an organized bargaining unit of all your fellow coworkers could demand your employer cease. Might be time to start talking to coworkers about this and many other things that upset you about your employer.

Employer 1: Salary only. None of my bonuses or RSUs are included. Bonuses were over half my comp. RSUs were higher than salary at least one year.

Employer 2: Salary and bonus only (large tech co; over half my comp is rsus).

Employer 3: totally wrong.

On the plus side, I now understand why I've occasionally been low-balled and then called a liar when I explain why the offer isn't compelling...

Wowwww. I was really reticent to give them the info to log in, and still not sure it was a good idea (although they have it anyway...), but it's interesting -- they have my current TC exact, RSUs and everything...and that little instruction line about how to garnish wages really gives you the feels...

Even better, the mystery of why a mortgage lender randomly asked me about my employment history from over two decades ago (i.e., working for my Mom!) is now solved! I was like, "How do you know I worked for my Mom in the 90s? And of all the jobs to ask about, why this?" Turns out only three employers show up over multiple decades of employment.

Happy to see that the payroll processor I used for awhile for our personal companies until I started doing it myself didn't share our data, but am now really worried about future control of it.

For those curious, I requested my Employment Data Report. Here's what was in it:

Pages 1-2:

  Dear xxx,
  
  Thank you for requesting your Employment Data Report. Your Employment Data Report
  includes all employment data sent to The Work Number by your employer(s). An
  important document titled "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting
  Act" is also enclosed. Great care has been taken to report this information correctly.
  Please help us in achieving even greater accuracy by reviewing all of the enclosed
  material carefully.
  
  Verifiers who have procured your data in the past 24 months -
  [list of organizations, including Credit Karma, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, ...]
  
  The information provided in this document is an unofficial report, intended for personal
  use by the employee-recipient only. It is not intended for verification purposes. Using this
  document for consumer verification purposes could constitute a violation of the
  Fair Credit Reporting Act and result in a monetary fine. If someone is asking you to
  provide verification of employment or income, please direct them to www.theworknumber.com.
  If you need further assistance or wish to dispute any information in your Employment Data
  Report, please contac -- page errors -- Please reference case number xxxxx.
  
  If you wish, you may also contact your employer(s) at the address indicated in each employment
  record below.
  
  Sincerely,
  The Work Number Service Team
  Attachment
  MM, MS

Pages 3-17:

  [pages and pages of complete up-to-date (2021 EOY) salary information,
  bonus breakdowns, title, employment status, division, state-specific
  disclaimers, and freeze instructions]

Snippet about freezing:

  A security freeze request may be sent via mail to:
  
  Equifax Workforce Solutions
  Attn: Employment Data Freeze
  3470 Rider Trail South
  Earth City, MO 63045
  
  You may also send a freeze request to:
  
  Email: TWNFreeze@equifax.com
  Phone: 1-866-222-5880
  Fax: 877-879-8182
  We will provide you with confirmation of the placement of your freeze.
  Please note that although some state laws may allow us to charge a fee,
  TALX Corporation never charges any fees to place or remove a security freeze.

I find the EU approach so much better. Your personal data (which means anything that can be used to uniquely identify you as a person) is your property, and the default is "no permission to use".

I pulled my own data. Hilariously, it includes my 3 years at reddit with the official title "JavaScript Apologist", which is what I wrote for myself on the about page when I was developing it.

It’s hilarious that companies try to stop you from discussing your salary but at the same time they will give it away for free to a shady company.

Meanwhile in Norway, every citizen can check the income, wealth, and taxes statements of other citizens and companies.

https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/forms/search-the-tax-lists/

if this is really that - this is clearly evidence of collusion amongst employers with indirect pressure on them to keep salalries at a certain level

Are there equivalent services that broker data of citizens in other countries? As a non-American, my layperson understanding of American legislation is that it's extremely lax when it comes to protecting individuals from privacy invasions like this. Is anyone aware of laws in the EU/Canada/Australia that would prevent this kind of thing happening?

Not just Equifax.

There are any number of consultancies that collect salary (and other compensation/benefits) data from many companies and then share that information with all their clients.

It's used as a method of putting downward pressure on salaries without explicitly colluding.

For those who are surprised/outraged from a privacy perspective- the employment verification/background check/etc space is very VC hot. YC and its affiliates are surely investors in some players in this space? Maybe https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/checkr ?

> * Who has accessed the report in the past 24 months

so now your current and future employers can see if you've been talking to other companies? that's... wrong.

I'm glad to see this here. I found out about this from the employee side when I was asked to interact with the site, and when I dug deeper was shocked with what I saw.

I've been telling friends/colleagues but many didn't honestly believe me.

After I found out about this, I noticed a pattern in new jobs - they always knew exactly what offer to make me that was about 10% higher than my current salary. I mean, the offers were like clockwork. I strongly feel prospective employers were using this information to decide on what offer to make.

I can summarize my feelings about this pretty succinctly.... this is not ok.

How is this even legal? How do we make this no longer possible? It seems like we need a new law to stop this unapproved sharing.

Did we ever agree to this?

In India there is National Skills Registry (NSR) by NASSCOM. Member companies require potential candidates to register and provide the registration number. This is then used by HR at member companies to track you around.

The best part is that in this case, it is the employees that pay for this, and that too as an yearly subscription! https://nationalskillsregistry.com/free-structure.htm

Finally, one of the cofounders of NASSCOM is Nandan Nilekani, the same guy who's the mastermind behind India's bio-metric surveillance program (my words) - Aadhar. Not surprising at all.

That last link says that data is exempt from CCPA.

> The Work Number® database is subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)

> Data that is regulated by the FCRA, as well as data used for employment purposes, is exempt from the CCPA.

Oh wow, this is a total outrage. Details have been shared for about 80% of my previous employment, and many of those employers listed details on a per-pay period basis.

They even include my net pay after voluntary deductions, such as 401k!

In California it’s illegal for a company to use historic salary info for a hiring or salary decision[1], so who is equifax trying to sell to in CA? This seems like a very grey legal area where the obvious use for the data is illegal.

[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Can you buy a dataset for your entire company and publish it internally as a fuckyou to whoever disclosed it, or is it a b2b thing?

When I looked mine up I could see just about every job I’ve ever had. It also showed who pulled this report over the past 24 months. I see that my credit card companies pulled it, a background check company that my current job used, and also some random “TEST Batch Account” whatever that is.

SSN + DOB and you can find out how much money I made on my w2 for many years of my life. Nice.

I am debating on doing a ccpa delete on this data. I wonder if future employers will give me a hard time when negotiating pay if they can’t verify my salary this way? Also, will I have to delete it every time that an employer sends them this data? Awesome.

Did something change recently or did someone just notice this? Verification of employment/income is standard practice in many finance-related fields, and is required to get a mortgage in the US, for example. My company integrates with TheWorkNumber to provide that feature through our app. I can see why people are sketched out by not knowing this was happening, but as someone else said your pay rate is not _really_ private info. I care less about this than I do the credit agencies that have a full record of all of your credit activity, despite definitely not wanting them to have that info.

It looks like creditkarma loves, loves, loves to check this data. Except for the bank holding my mortgage only credit karma has checked it. I'm OK with the bank checking, if this system exists clearly bank handing out 1 million should be allowed to access it (my preferred outcome would be the system did not exist, or if it did be run by the government who already have all the data.

"To log in, enter your SSN, date of birth, home address, and" <closes tab>

No way, no how.

Can a prospective employee use this data to gain an advantage in salary negotiations? If not, then this doesn’t seem fair at all.

Why on earth would employers be motivated to sell this data or provide consent to their payroll processors to disclose it?

What's in it for them? I can't imagine the per-employee revenue it brings in would be anywhere near the same magnitude of order as the FTE cost. So it's a drop in the bucket to their bottom line.

Meanwhile the reputational risk and PR blowback once found out could be severe (I certainly would never work for such a shady or ignorant outfit).

Wow, this is completely accurate. Has temp working job on college campus, information from when I was at Microsoft and Google. Interesting from Microsoft it just contains my base salary and cash bonus, but Google has base salary, cash bonus, and RSU grants as "Other Income".

I have a distaste for the credit reporting system because of (a) the flagrant security lapses and (b) I still don’t understand why “identity theft” is somehow my problem when I am neither the fraudster nor the defrauded party.

What’s the strongest argument in favor of credit reporting agencies? If we got rid of them would borrowing money become so difficult or expensive that we’d regret what we wished for?

What the fudge. It has the health plan info for me, my wife, and my daughter on the report? This is not okay.

I kinda thought all 3 of my offers during my recent job change were suspiciously close. Now I know why, as all 3 employers requested it. Fuck everything about this.

A few jobs are missing, but the most recent (and therefore most relevant) is correct.

Learning that this website exists, and then finding detailed and accurate information in my record is what convinced me to start sharing my salary data with my peers.

As I see it, this database is a breach of an implicit social contract between me and the companies that I work for. Since my employers apparently have no issues sharing my salary with their peers, I see no reason not to do the same with my peers.

Both my YC backed previous employers have reported me and checked up on me in there before hiring me. My current employer has not. I was able to increase TC just shy of 150k when I jumped my current employer.

I registered and asked for my "Employment Data Report".

Besides showing all my pay data for the past two years (pay period start, pay period end, pay date, hours, and pay for each pay period) as I expected, it also lists everyone who has "procured your data" in the past 24 months.

The inquiries were interesting. Four organizations inquired. One is entirely as I expected, one is expected but the timing is slightly odd, one is maybe expected except they made a lot more inquiries than I would have expected, and one I have no idea what the heck they are doing.

The entirely expected one is my bank. Last year I applied for a home equity line of credit and there is one inquire near the start of that, and one that looks like it was just before they approved the loan.

The expected but odd one is Capital One. I applied for a new credit card from them. The oddity is the inquiry was about a week after I had received and started using the new card. I'd have expected it to be before they approved the application.

The one that is maybe expected except for the number of inquiries is Credit Karma. There are 8 inquiries, about a month apart, from January 2020 through September 2020. The report only goes back to January 2020 so it seems likely they were also inquiring before that. So once a month up until around the time Intuit bought Credit Karma.

The one I have no idea at all about is from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dba CMS. That's a federal government agency that runs Medicare and works with the states to run Medicaid. I'm not old enough for Medicare and not poor enough for Medicaid and have not applied for any services CMS deals with as far as I know. The inquiry was in October 2020, and I don't recall doing anything unusual related to health at all around then.

Used to work there as a software developer and was somewhat acquainted with the business model. If you're employed and your employer outsources HR functionality to payroll providers (e.g. PayChex, ADP, etc.), there are contractual agreements to provide it to EWS, whose business model is literally more payroll records = $$$ = stock prices go up.

Salary data should be public anyway. Let’s all share ours. I’m currently contracting for $95/hr. My most recent salary was $140k, my most recent contracts besides my current one were a flat rate $24k contract for up to 80 hours and a short term contract for $100/hr. (I obviously like my current contract quite a lot)

I can't access my own data.

Someone already signed up using my SSN.

It's a bit of a side tangent but we seriously need to level the playing field when it comes to compensation. levels.fyi has done a lot for tech but there are tons of fields out there that don't have a hope. Someone needs to build a Glassdoor with a monetization model that isn't dependent on the self-same companies paying to advertise or hide reviews, etc.

I recently got started on something for accountants[0] (fun for me because I got to leverage NocoDB[1]), and I'm considering putting together something for everyone (i.e. every industry -- from gardeners to lawyers). Everyone needs to have a levels.fyi or an uncompromised Glassdoor and I can't find one so far. Even just something like camelcamelcamel for similar positions at the same company would be interesting.

[0]: https://nomorepizzaparties.com/

[1]: https://nocodb.com

This site is also another attack on Google Voice and similar numbers. The sign up mysteriously failed when I provided my Google Voice with no explanation. Suddenly worked when I provided my T-Mobile number. I expect more unblockable spam soon.

their CDN is omicroncdn.net - cannot make this stuff up

I don't get culture issue, in many countries I lived in never met anyone that had any issue sharing salary data.

In fact, most of them openely discuss such matters.

Never got why in US it is so "pssst, keep it low" when discussing such matters.

Not sure why salary data needs to be so secret. I think it is important for potential employer to understand how much an employee is willing to work for . For one thing they not going to approach you with lower salary then they know about. This eliminates a set of employers who cannot afford you and save a lot of time for everybody. Employer will obviously offer as low as they can (what would you do yourself in this case) but if you are unhappy with the offer you just don’t accept. It looks a important however to understand your “market value” but this requires getting multiple offers.

If I remember correctly, Massachusetts has a law that says that potential employers are not permitted to ask candidates what their previous salary was. The intent of this law is to ensure that people who have been discriminated against in the past will not continue to be discriminated against by new employers who "copy" the treatment of previous employers.

(a) Can anyone confirm that I'm remembering this correctly?

(b) Is this behavior by Equifax not a violation of the Massachusetts law (at least as far as it concerns citizens of Massachusetts, and in the spirit if not in the letter of the law)?

Who is selling the salary data to equifax?

We are not, knowingly, providing this data to Equifax; but sure enough, there it is. I'm going to guess it's tied up within the mountain of agreements with our HRIS or payroll provider.

"confirm your identity by providing a phone number or email to receive a one-time passcode"

<slaps forehead>

Don’t worry, just wait for the next outdated struts application to be pwned and it will all be public.

Equifax has to be the epitomy of the most illegal thing that isn't.

In Europe this company could not exist.

I was surprised for about half a minute. Then I remembered, if it's not explicitly illegal and there's money to be made, of course they're doing it.

They know every single paycheck amount and date, so it really looks like it comes from ADP.

I work at a company that's been in talks with Equifax, Experian and a new player (Blend) to provide employment and income verification data. Selling employee data and then spinning it as anything other than a short-term money grab is one of my least favorite things about my current employer.

That said, those who are worried about Equifax should probably rather be more worried about Experian. In our experience Experian is a) bidding more aggressively and b) has worse security practices. On the other hand, the Equifax talks I've been involved in demonstrate some of the changes Equifax has made to reduce risk of leaking sensitive data.

Equifax won't store any PII in our case. We store the data and provide them with an index file that is both encrypted and only contains internal identifiers and a hashed SSN (shared RSA key). Even if an attacker got their hands on all 3 things (decryption key, file and shared RSA hash key), they'd still only be able to know which SSNs are in our data-set, and nothing about those people. Everything else goes through our API, so the flow goes something like:

1. Equifax checks their hash file to see if we have their ssn 2. If so, Equifax authenticates against our API using their client id and secret and then makes their request for the employment/income information.

There are different calls they can make based on how much data they actually need to fulfill whatever the request is (e.g. if you're trying to verify employment you don't need the income data).

This is in contrast to Experian, who as a first step wanted a plaintext flat file containing a full dump of employment and income information for the last 7 years of everybody in our system...

If you have privacy concerns, you can put fraud alerts and put a free credit freeze your credit reports

Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/cred...

Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

TransUnion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

And also freeze a few other reports

NCTUE (utilities and telecom): https://www.nctue.com/consumers

ChexSystems (banking): https://www.chexsystems.com/web/chexsystems/consumerdebit/pa...

Innovis (another CRA): https://www.innovis.com/personal/securityFreeze

LexisNexus (apparently insurance companies pull from them): https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/freeze

Work Number: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

You can delete information from Plaid: https://plaid.com/legal/data-protection-request-form/

And usually you can talk to your doctor’s office about putting a flag on your medical records so they have to call you before releasing them to a third party

You can also opt out of Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx sharing information (individual banks may vary). You can also ask banks about additional security for your bank account.

Visa: https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do

Mastercard: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/vision/corp-responsibility/c...

Amex: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/privacy-center/

I also suggest setting up an IRS pin: https://www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/get-an-identi...

Salary data is proprietary between an employee and employer. There needs to be a law prohibiting sharing if it with any other parties.

If you don't feel employers should be permitted to circumvent the laws that prohibit them from demanding your current/past salary information by performing an end run through a 3rd party, you should contact your representatives.

Resistbot (https://resist.bot) makes this very easy.

In Israel this is a common practice for many years now, the Zviran Pay & Benefits Data [1] is widely used by employers and is a somewhat hidden secret from employees

[1] https://zviran.co.il/en/salary-surveys/

Yep, all my salary from Stanford University and Apple were sent in, including RSUs.

Apple, the poster-child for user privacy. They even listed me as an “Associate,” when I was doing sensor design. Not surprised, given how management treated us.

I wonder if they do it for all reporting levels, like if they’ll send in a manager’s salary as well.

I got my report but the data was way off. Base salaries reported too high (~2x), bonuses in the ballpark (but wrong), and RSUs reported too low (~2x). There is a lot of detail in the report that gives a false impression that they have the exact figures but they certainly do not appear to in all cases.

You can't share your salary data with co-workers, but we will share it with all your prospective employers.

If you are a resident of WA or CA, your information is not on that platform. I tried to fill out the “do not sell my information” form and I got a page that said this option is not available in your state. I am assuming the obvious. Perhaps my judgment is clouded. Thank you for this information OP.

The use case I have seen for this is not salary negotiation - in fact, that is illegal in a non-zero number of states - but rather employment validation for home mortgages and marketing purposes.

Not saying it's better - but it's probably not being used the way it seems many pre-suppose here.

Just checked and Salesforce (my employer) is not listed. One less element of privacy given away

What's funny about this type of data is how outdated it can be. When I used to have CapitalOne (I think it was them) their app showed a more elaborate credit report which included job history and other things. My job listed was a job I haven't worked at for nearly a decade. I can't imagine how inacurate this is. On the other hand, the data in aggregate might be useful to determine what kinds of jobs people have in different regions or something to that effect. I certainly hope the data is not shared with full doxing information to people like Facebook, that is horrific to think Facebook has your credit score attached to your profile.

Salary data is pretty valuable.

Someone should make a site (like glass door) where existing employees post salary information and other non-nda breaking information, and people who want it pay them for it (with the site taking a cut)

Why are we giving it away for free anyway?

Anyone interested in building a software solution around data harvesting with data dignity can hit me up. I am working on a solution that focuses on users benefitting from this kind of transactions.

twitter: @jonas_kg gmail: jonaskgmoo

How much does it cost to get a list of everyone's salary at my company?

I wrote software for a company that sold software to Texas hhsc, they use this to look for hidden assets when assessing benefits. This is the only system I know of that contains salary info. We integrated with their apis for a number of products and their data is a mess and often not very accurate. Also their api has a decent error rate. 5 years ago anyway, their api would break with any non unicode characters in a name. There were some foreign companies that we couldn't get data from for example.

It's "nice" that this is the disclaimer above the footer of the search form page:

> The information provided here is an unofficial report, intended for personal use by the employee-recipient only. It is not intended for verification purposes. Using this document for consumer verification purposes could constitute a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If someone is asking you to provide verification of employment or income, please direct them to www.theworknumber.com.

> NOT INTENDED FOR VERIFICATION PURPOSES.

mkay

what is the work number? is this deliberately a confusingly made up name of company and what they do?

In this day and age with phishing and other impersonation sites running rampant, I wish large corporations would leverage their root domain appropriately and use subdomains. Why isn't this theworknumber.equifax.com to provide legitimacy? Why can't I use my equifax login to check it? And why does it redirect to yet another domain: https://secure.theworknumber.talx.com?

It is a pretty bold offer considering how completely awful their data security turned out to be after their enormous data leak. How are they able to stay away from law suits?

I cant access the form with firefox. I dont see any blocked requests from my dns blocker in the network tab.

Uncaught DOMException: Permission denied to access property "frameElement" on cross-origin object EnterIDAndPIN.ascx:131 postDataToAuthApp https://secure.theworknumber.talx.com/twneeer/Preauthenticat...

I can't even log in because they want to text verification codes to phone numbers that have never been associated with me (maybe they're old work cell numbers?)

Did we hug it to death already? I am getting a server error.

I feel like this could be good for some people and very bad for others. Good luck getting a 50% increase with a new job when your salary history is available.

I'm not going to touch this website because I don't want to learn in 6 months that I was actually agreeing to sell off my soul and house but...

The previous addresses thing makes me feel like this will get taken down very soon. Everyone knows that abusers and stalkers can make very dangerous use out of addresses. It's only going to take one terrible incident before this gets investigated by the government.

If they would operate in Europe, they would be fined tens and hundereds of millions USD in each country for publishing such private information...

Just checked it: Amazon and Facebook are both in here.

In Colorado, employers are not allowed to prevent people from discussing compensation with coworkers and they can't retaliate if they do.

I'm working for a DAO and our salaries are public because governance had to approve the budget and all the transactions are on the public blockchain. It's refreshing to that level of transparency not to mention it forces us to have fair compensation.

Did you know TWN charge ridiculous $$ to their clients for this data which they don’t even ask users the permission to share?

Oh just sharing my PII data such as SSN, DOB, how much I make, earnings, deductions, 401K, my previous sal, where I worked everything without my consent? I mean the f&$k!

Why are employers/ payroll providers sharing this data without users consent? It’s not theirs to share?

There was an article in the New York Times about three years ago that ADP sells everyone's salary information, too.

If your company uses ADP for payroll processing, your company has "agreed" on your behalf to make this information available for sale.

Unless you're in a company of three people, good luck getting the payroll department to move to a more ethical payroll provider.

The real question is why should Equifax have my data in the first place. My contract is with my employer not with Equifax. This is a breach of trust by the employer using my information as its product for sale. What is the government role in regulating this ? If government can't regulate this, what is the point of government's existence ?

I don't think Equifax is really the one to be doing this but I do think this type of transparency is good. It will only serve to level the playing field and prevent employers from taking advantage. For that reason though, I don't see many employers sharing these data, especially any who would be on the lower end of the spectrum.

I wonder if most of the info is sent by the payroll / HR software employers use, rather than the employer themselves and without said employers knowledge? I.e. it’s a way for the payroll software companies to earn extra money rather than the original employer.

Just as a reminder, not sharing you salary information with peers only helps one group: employers.

Why does it redirect you to a talx address when you login? I mean I looked it up and it seems talx is appropriate. But these domain names not using equifax.com/redirecting to different domains is freaking stupid because it really smells like phishing

Honest question for people who are concerned about this - why is it troubling? If another company wants to hire you, obviously they'll need to offer stronger compensation than you currently have to convince you to ditch a comfortable position.

The fact that employers want employees to stay quiet about their compensation so they don't have to start handing out raises doesn't seem like a good reason to be concerned about this to me. From an employers perspective, that taboo makes sense to push - I'm not saying it's right, just that it makes sense from a business perspective. Quite frankly, we've all seen proof that some people are just much more proficient at certain tasks than others. Management could spend all day explaining to someone why that person gets paid way more than the next person, but the simple fact that they have been getting paid more for years speaks for itself in my opinion.

Imagine the scenario where software was made that took this leaked data and sent out personalized emails to every American telling them what their colleagues, boss, and boss’s boss made.

Wonder what this type of psychological software weapon would do politically…

Seems like a site we should all submit to https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/

Having hopped jobs every 1-2 years for the last decade, I don't think I've ever been honest when asked my current salary. Never bit me. It would be quite shocking (would it be legal?) if an offer was rescinded based on this data.

Their hamburger offers an option “my personal data” but when I clicked on it I got a 403

Damn, my entire history is there, down to the cent... base pay, bonuses, everything. I can't even get this old data from my employer's intranet. Such BS.

Can anyone confirm prospective employers actually pull this before making an offer?

Seems to require a US phone number to sign up. I don't live in the US anymore.

More on this here:

https://www.fastcompany.com/40485634/equifax-salary-data-and...

I find it interesting that no employer of mine since 2011 has been reporting data to this.

Also the pages in the report are literally sideways, which made trying to read it on my phone nearly impossible.

Does this website or any other similar ones show your performance, your rehire-ability or if you got fired from a previous job? (outside of what can be inferred from your compensation)

>Who has accessed the report in the past 24 months

That is fucked up.

Edit - looking around, this system that has all of my personal data has a password requirement that looks like it was made in the 1990's.

8-16 characters. FFS

I was just thinking last night that in 2022 we are going to see a lot of pushback against rising salaries and employee bargaining power. I expect more of this crap around the globe

Such information asymmetry shifts market powers towards employers. As as I understand, an employee can't get a similar dataset of salary ranges in a particular company.

just the other day I got a prompt on my Amex (or Chase) account to update my salary info. i wouldn't be surprised if they sell this data to advertisers.

Equifax asking me to input my SSN to see this data... hmm.

Information asymmetry in salary negotiation involves an employer finding out what you earn and using that as leverage over what they will pay you

How is this not considered PII and subject to all of the disclosure and control requirements we all must abide by? May an employer opt out?

Can I pay to see my colleagues’ paychecks?

Stuff like this is why I am pro-union, even when I am not a socialist or whatever.

Employers have all the power over employees, they share data indiscriminately, they have all the information and power. It's only fair that employees have some power back and they can bargain together as a group.

(Ironically in "socialist" countries, the employer has more power, because the employer, the union and the state are all ultimately the same entity, as they are all controlled by the party. But that's a different discussion I guess.)

In Sweden salary information like this is provided by the government for everyone. Just a phone call away.

This can be manipulated for profit

Does it work only for people that are currently employed? Or does it sell also past data?

Can't bother to register. Waiting for the inevitable leak to satisfy my curiosity

Does anyone else get a "Server Error" when trying to "register?"

This is positively dystopian.

Hilarious watching (tech-literate even) people lose their mind over this. While they use their iPad/Android to generate a million data points about intimate life details, conversations and locations on a daily basis - no problem! It's only an outrage when someone says it is.

Thankfully I wasn't able to find anything from employers in Canada

If this is correct, then it would be risky for someone to lie to a new employer about their former salary in order to receive an offer for a higher pay, because the new employer could use this service to cross check the employee's claims.

At what point did I as a US Citizen opt-in to this sick system?

Are there any downsides to requesting this data on yourself?

What can we do to stop privacy invasions like this?

Does anyone know what’s the code for Apple?

Any way to log in if currently unemployed?

Anyone know if there is a UK equivalent?

What an amazing world we live in.

Is this just for United States?

Cue outrage from tons of hypocrites who complain about the GDPR making it harder for companies to use personal information

It’s doubtful it comes from your employer, it more likely comes from credit applications.

Is this for the US only?

Is there any equivalent to this in Europe? Would it not be illegal under GDPR?

Gf

Yes, it's concerning, but let's be realistic about this. I'm surprised HN readers are so surprised by this! On a scale of Room 641A (https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Airbnb&job=&city=&year=202....

Third, there are legitimate reasons why this system exists. If you're applying for a mortgage, how do you expect them to verify your salary? You can submit paystubs, but those can be faked. Same with bank statements. The only way for a bank to verify your salary is to actually call your employer. And if a bank calls your employer to verify your salary, and they have your DoB, SSN, and home address, it's pretty likely your employer is going to tell them anyways. Even if your employer only confirmed / denied (as opposed to providing a number), they could just repeatedly call and binary search it. (This probably wouldn't surprise the employer, since you might be getting quotes from multiple mortgage companies at once.) Given that mortgage companies, banks, and other finserv firms need to verify your income and employment history, it's not entirely unreasonable for a centralized database to exist, and for it to be guarded by what should be secret (SSN, DoB, address).

That said, the problem is that the US is too reliant on SSNs. If you prior on (the US treats SSNs as secret), being able to access salary data with it really isn't ridiculous.

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"I can't believe you could ever do this to me, Employer! You - you said we were like Family! I mean, it seems just the other day you, me and the CFO were tipping cheap IPAs and bonding at the foosball table ..."

The information for my limited company earnings is also available online as part of the company accounts and you can probably work out my day rate from it.

Not sure I care that much. Also, I don't think someone who thinks they deserve a big bump and has passed the interview I wouldn't necessarily say it's the most immoral crime to suggest your previous salary was higher than it really was. Surely you have a job that is paying X and the person can either do the job well or not.

Why should I be worried about others knowing what I earn?

This is a good use case for the web3 ecosystem, or at least for those working on the decentralization, personal data ownership and control parts.

It should be obvious that it is important to employers to be able to verify the claims made by people who are applying to them for jobs. Claims of employment or education or credential or skill or whatever. That's what zero trust is all about, isn't it?

That need is the reason that this data is (centrally) collected and then shared. There is a massive mutual benefit incentive on the part of employers- and on the part of the SAAS providers to employers- to share data on the employees and to benefit from data of others being shared.

And yes that may be seen to violate the privacy of the people who had an employment relationship and who received money over the course of that relationship, but employer corporate persons are at least part owners of that data- of what money and what dates and so forth was paid to what human persons by them.

By what means does a web3 protocol based on verifiable credentials enable those who have requirements to perform verification while preventing centralization and preserving the rights of the humans whose data participates in these protocols?

That's the mountaintop goal. What's the path to get there?