Comment by basseq
3 years ago
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.
I think the issue is - do companies who give them information also get access to it for people outside their org
Others have wrote this in the thread, but anecdotally I once tried to push up what I considered a low ball offer, and lied about my current comp. HR quickly said - no, thats not your current comp
I'm pretty sure they didn't reach out to my current company to ask, so the only other option was abusing a system like this
I very much doubt it. The "Salary data is for sale" title is misleading; There's no way for me to go pay Equifax for access to u/shmatt's data. They might have some aggregate datasets for sale, removing PII.
The same goes for credit data; you (largely) can't run a credit check on me without my permission.
This is an HR service to ease the burden of legitimate requests for employment or salary data that you, as an employee, request.
More logically, employers wouldn't want other companies to be able to access their payroll information for competitive reasons.
I can't explain your previous experience; perhaps you were at a company with firm pay bands, and they knew you were already at the top of your current one?
> you (largely) can't run a credit check on me without my permission
that is LOL incorrect. I know a car sales department lead, a licensed real estate broker who is also a rental apartment owner, and multiple small business owners that I suspect can all snoop on my US credit record pretty much at will. The second part of that is that each and every one of those people do lie on signed documents routinely, which apparently is normal.
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> you (largely) can't run a credit check on me without my permission
In my country there are forums where every once in a while a guy with access to these credit systems shows up and starts literally taking requests. People post names and he reveals everything about the person's credit history. For free and in the open.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was just as easy in the US for some bank or employer to look up your entire financial history.
without having to hunt down someone in HR
When I worked for UPS they specifically told me there was absolutely no way that HR would verify salary/employment over the phone for mortgage applications and the only way to do it was via theworknumber.com. UPS has ~500,000 employees so you can understand why they'd want to offload this work to a third party. I was working with a smaller mortgage company so they grumbled about having to do it this non-traditional way but it all worked out in the end.