Comment by staunch
3 years ago
When I submit the myprivacy.equifax.com validation it hangs at "Processing..." indefinitely. #AbolishCreditAgencies
3 years ago
When I submit the myprivacy.equifax.com validation it hangs at "Processing..." indefinitely. #AbolishCreditAgencies
Credit, bank checking (ChexSystems), and personal information aggregators like Lexis Nexis and Thomson Reuters Clear ought to be abolished or curbed indeed. I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now. However we are a class of people whose sexuality can be unfairly identified by these databases.
> I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now.
It bothers me sometimes if other people do that, it does not bother me at all if actual trans people want to talk about it. Thank you for sharing, that angle didn't occur to me.
> I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now.
I'm glad you did, as I hadn't thought about that since it isn't part of my day-to-day experience.
Hopefully TransUnion is more respectful of your rights.
Is the issue 'just' that they misgender trans people? That alone is already shitty of course. Or is the issue also that it makes later 'verification' by these agencies more difficult if the recorded gender does not match the apparent gender of the person?
The issue is that they have a field for prior names/AKA/aliases, and it's typically immutable. You can watch a person's face change as they read the report.
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If this helps, me and my team use LX and some product from TR and for our purposes sex by itself is not a strong driver for anything. That said, I absolutely agree with your initial statement. There is way too much information available just from those two sources and those should be restricted as much as possible.
As other users noted, I have personally zero issue when it is an individual case ( my personal misgivings start somewhere where it moves to a political wedge issue ).
> However we are a class of people whose sexuality can be unfairly identified by these databases.
What do you mean, that you go through life as a woman but that the DB says you were born as a man (for example) ?
Out of curiosity, what happens if you use a free credit card e.g Barclays? Does living in the EU zone protect you? Do they have access to your bank account information?
I'm not familiar with the Barclay card. MasterCard has a service called True Name that lets you put whatever you want on your card. It's proprietary but I don't know if they keep it between the two of you. European countries have much stronger privacy protections, though they might have social security numbers which contain sex as an even/odd digit, and it's difficult to change. Checking account numbers are listed in these systems. Banks guard client account line items closely, although in the US the government has blanket access without a warrant.
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As a US citizen living in the EU. They don’t give two fucks where you live and will happily tell anyone anything that has your social security number. I’ve thought about trying to complain to them about the GDPR… but anyway, if you have a non-US card, the US credit checks won’t register it because the non-US banks don’t report it, even though they know you’re a US citizen. We have a non-US Mastercard and Amex, and they aren’t on our US credit reports. In fact, we no longer have any US debt but our credit scores are less than 500 for paying it all off. It may literally be impossible to move back and have the same quality of life we did when we moved away. Might just stay here forever.
> However we are a class of people whose sexuality can be unfairly identified by these databases.
Good perspective and thanks for sharing it. I am curious about your choice of words though. You said "sexuality" and not "gender identity". Is there some reason why? I've always thought of the term sexuality to be how you feel about others. Or is that what you meant here?
Gender identity falls under the umbrella of sexuality. I use less-polite terms to remind people that it's the most excruciatingly private details of my life on some bullshit report. One time while applying for an apartment, a boomer broker sarcastically exclaimed, "Well, THAT'S a valid life choice!" to me. Last year I encountered a professional whose mind was blown by this information and asked me if I've had surgery. It's wrong that this is at the mercy of a newish industry that exists to track individuals' merit in make-believe points.
I used to work at Lexis Nexis and I agree since I could see first hand how much personal data and information they have on individuals.
They also used theworknumber funny enough for any "employment verification" etc, pretty sure they have a partnership.
Trans politics are you politics. Share you politics - they’re important and interesting. :)
Please do not post flamebait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now.
You're right. Too bad it didn't stop you from doing it anyway.
You can't attack other users like that here, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it again.
Also: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We also ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for, because it destroys the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but we need you to be aware of this rule and stop that pattern. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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The current oligopoly of the big three credit bureaus is a travesty and needs substantial reform.
That being said, abolishing the concept of a consumer credit report entirely is a terrible idea. It is a fact that different people simply present different risks to a lender in their likelihood of default. Having actual data about a person's previous repayment history is extremely predictive of their future default probability (with proper ML applied).
If you remove the ability to use data about that actual person's previous behavior then instead lenders will simply not provide credit or financial services to large proportions of the population whom might be credit worthy as they would be unable to determine if they are creditworthy.
Again, I'm not arguing for the status quo. A lot of reform is needed. But to ignore the reality of how credit underwriting works is foolish. One of the reasons that many developing countries don't have financial services for their populations to access debt is because they don't have sufficient data to do credit underwriting.
And debt is a critical tool to enable investment in the present. Used wisely, debt enables a person to borrow from the future to invest in the present, e.g. buying a car so they can commute to a nearby city and earn a higher salary.
>That being said, abolishing the concept of a consumer credit report entirely is a terrible idea. It is a fact that different people simply present different risks to a lender in their likelihood of default.
And any bank will ascertain this from their forms when applying for a loan well before they do any kind of credit check on you.
Also, YOU should control your credit history. You can give it to a lender if you wish to prove your credit worthiness. They shouldn't be allowed to give it to anyone else. Organizations should not be allowed to track it unsolicited.
The U.S. financial system worked just fine before credit scores became a thing in 1989.
Credit scores were invented in the 1950s. I’d estimate that the US financial system has improved substantially since then, in both absolute and relative terms.
“In 1956, engineer Bill Fair teamed up with mathematician Earl Isaac to create Fair, Isaac and Company, with the goal of creating a standardized, impartial credit scoring system. Within two years, they had begun selling their first credit scoring system.”
You might recognize the names Fair and Isaac as the F and I in FICO.
https://www.opploans.com/oppu/articles/a-brief-history-of-cr...
Yes, but probably by being much more conservative and relying on the branch managers to have a close working relationship, or long standing banking relationship with the people seeking credit.
When that gets more automated - i.e. giving credit to somebody you've never met, then a centralized automated system for verifying trustworthiness is also needed to compensate.
It may even have the net effect of allowing some people to get credit that never could before, so swings and roundabouts I guess.
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No, it didn't, it worked that WASP attendees of the bank manager's church got good rates and anyone born on the wrong side of town got turned away.
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This comment outs you as someone who thinks in Twitter/Reddit memes.
> Used wisely
When does that ever happen? Lending and borrowing are always at the root of every economic crisis. National debt of countries are already astronomically large and will only keep growing.
Just abolish credit as well. If it means the economy will grow slower, so be it.
>If it means the economy will grow slower, so be it.
This is easy for someone to say who already lives a comfortable life.
Credit is simply a more efficient use of wealth. Without credit, money stored is money that is unused, and thus money denied to everyone else. Everyone is poorer as a result because you have millions of people willing to exchange their goods and services but are blocked because they lack a medium of exchange that is being hoarded by the wealthy.
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>Abolish credit
Expand?
I and probably you are probably working in arrears for our employers. That is, we don't get paid until after the work is done. That is extending our employers a credit line. The same applies for rent, for utilities, for phone data, for taxes...
Credit is at the root of every economic crisis because credit is money.
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I'm going to guess that either you already own your home and your car outright, or that you're renting something somewhere and don't own a car. Or you're wealthy to the point of being able to pay cash or make major purchases without having to save for a while.
In any case, you're already comfortable. You already have what you need. So it's easy to be against the things that would help people slightly less fortunate than you.
Credit is a necessity. For me to save up the money to buy the house I'm in today would literally take me 20 years, because not only would I need to be setting aside $2,000/month, but would also need to still be paying rent at wherever I was. Credit allows me to buy the house NOW and start building equity NOW. Yes, I acknowledge I'll spend a few extra thousand for the privilege, but it's worth it.
Same with a car. If I need a car to get to work, I can't save for 3+ years while paying for Lyft every day if I live too far from work to take a bike or live in a climate where riding a bike is excruciating.
That said, I concede that predatory lending exists. I don't think adjustable rate mortgages should have ever existed. Student loans were a good idea (Provide a way for any qualified person to attend college regardless of current financial status), but ended up with disastrous side effects (Tuition hikes to extract more money, reduced government investment into colleges since students are more able to foot the bill).
I also concede that some people are bad with money. They'll get loans they can't afford and buy everything on credit with no hope of paying it off. They rent things from Rent-A-Center, which is incredibly predatory.
But to argue for the abolishment of credit because some people suck at it is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would absolutely destroy the middle class and kneecap upward mobility of the lower class.
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> When does that ever happen?
All the time. Debt is almost ubiquitous, and the vast majority of people and businesses use it productively.
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Credit is a tool - one that is needed to keep economic systems working correctly. Depressions don't occur when financial systems pull back - Depressions occur when access to financial capital via credit dries up.
That said, as a tool, it is often mis-used (virtually anything that starts with a credit card is in this category).
#AbolishCreditAgencies
Things were bad, or worse, before they existed. Every little town had one (I remember walking past Palo Alto’s downtown; it was just a storefront with a bunch of file cabinets). Getting credit was slow and complicated and really a pain when you moved.
And before that, even into the mid 20th century, getting credit was all about your network. And remember how much people complain about VCs relying on intros rather than cold calls…well that’s how the entire financial system used to work.
Yes the credit agencies are abusive and lazy and need serious reform and legal management, but they also provide valuable services. I believe it is possible to have the latter and fix the former.
Check if an ad blocker might be interfering? I finished my CCPA request in ~2 minutes and it only required that I do SMS verification. Presumably because the name, phone, address, and email all matched records they had on file for me...
There’s a special caliber of crappy site that only functions when ad-blocking is enabled.
My working theory is that the sites are so bad, they rely on the ads to provide their dependencies as global. Block the ads and you’ve blocked the ancient version jquery the main site needs loaded of function.
At least some adblockers work on keywords. I once made an api call called 'track' that got blocked as a tracker. It was for the pathway you were on after choosing something on that page. I had to rename it to get it to work properly.
It didn't matter that it was an api for that domain. It didn't matter that it had nothing to do with Google ads. It certainly wasn't on any list unless they were adding all newly registered domains to it.
You can just send them an email as defined in the CCPA. Why even give them your cell or SSN.