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Being ‘wasted’ on Facebook may damage your credit score
- mitkok 11y agoBehind paywall, clicks away
- bentpins 11y agoGoogle cache link to get around paywall http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fd6daedee-706a-11e5-9b9e-690fdae72044.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
- mschuster91 11y agoHow does a credit score service know which of the dozens of John Does you are on Facebook? The only ways in which this can work is a) you have a pretty unique name on FB or b) you have to give your FB name on your credit application (if I'd see this on a form, I'd just tell the bank guy to forget everything and walk out). Of course, this opens a possibility for manipulation - either you use someone else's clean FB page, or a malevolent entity creates a profile in your name, or you yourself have one "clean" profile and one "real" profile which many people already do to hide their pot smoke pics from potential employers.
- riskneural 11y agoI'm findable on facebook with my name and the name of the city I live it. It's not so hard.
- visakanv 11y agoAlso I think things like who's in your friends list, etc.
- rogeryu 11y agoThe credit score service doesn't know, but FB does. Can you imagine that FB sells this information anywhere in the near future? I bet they can make great profiles of you, and compared to a big pile of people with similar profiles, the bank can see what profiles predict risk.
- adrianN 11y agoFirst, the bank might not care whether it's really you. If there is someone with "bad behavior signs" who is sufficiently similar to you the prudent thing to do if you want to minimize loan risk is to assume that it's you. Secondly, it's really simple to deanonymize data. Check for example http://33bits.org/2011/03/09/link-prediction-by-de-anonymization-how-we-won-the-kaggle-social-network-challenge/ http://33bits.org/2011/03/09/link-prediction-by-de-anonymiza... As the site name implies, you need just 33 bits of good information to distinguish every person on Earth. It's not hard to get enough bits from your Facebook timeline to cross-correlate it with other stuff the bank might know about you.
- maaku 11y agoI am one of three people in the entire world with my firstname, lastname combination. One of the other two goes by a different name, and the other is Portuguese. It must be nice to have a common name.
- treerock 11y agoI'm curious. How do you know this?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pdkl95 11y ago1) That would be why they are trying to push their irresponsible "real names" policy. 2) Let's not forget they have more than your name. They can geolocate your IP, for example, to get an approximate location. If I remember correctly, name and zip alone has something like an 85% chance of uniquely identifying someone. If you tell them your birthday, that chance goes up into the high 90s. 3) Once you have their cookie, they have many other sources of information thanks to "beacon"[1]. Identification becomes significantly easier when they have other businesses adding data. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
- crwll 11y agoWhy would you keep your FB posts public and not limited to your friends or to some subset of those (depending on what you are posting)? Comments here seem to once again indicate as if everything posted to Facebook was automatically and irrevocably public. I don't really see that going on at least on my group of friends.
- jackgavigan 11y agoWhat if it becomes a prerequisite to grant your bank or FICO access to your Facebook posts, as part of the loan application?
- PMan74 11y agoOr what if FB just decide to sell access to all posts (regardless of privacy setting on that post) to certain companies. Could they do that? You'd probably have to read (and keep up with) the T&Cs.
- chrsstrm 11y agoA: "What Facebook profile?"
- izacus 11y ago"I see. Lowest credit rating then." Same as for us foreigners who don't have any credit rating records valid in US. Meaning you get the crappiest deals and worst apartments.
- Sephr 11y agoThen you simply tell them that you don't have a Facebook account. If they find a private account with your name, you can tell them that it's not you.
- spacemanmatt 11y agoIf FB couldn't figure out who you are, they locked your account and required a photo of your driver's license or other state/national ID to verify identity.
- Fluid_Mechanics 11y agoThankfully I deleted my Facebook account back in 2007. Paranoia pays off.
- psykovsky 11y agoYou did, did you? Try logging in again into that Facebook account you "deleted" and see what awaits you...
- szatkus 11y agoAfter two weeks from deactivation an account is removed completely. At least it was that way in 2011.
- sundaeofshock 11y agoFacebook never deletes anything. An object (account, photo, posting, comment, like, etc) may no longer be visible, but it still lives on in FB's massive data repository.
- psykovsky 11y agoFirsthand experience?
- tedunangst 11y agoI suppose that's a catchier summary than "Facebook history may allow people without credit scores to get loans".
- spacemanmatt 11y agoHaving worked for a subprime lender for several years, screw you.
- mirimir 11y agoAlso people with subprime credit scores. But not if they publicly mention being wasted ;)
- joosters 11y agoThere's so much potential for mis-scoring here. Take the 'wasted' example. You can't just grep for the word, it depends on the context. e.g. What if someone is a big fan of the GTA games? The game uses the phrase 'wasted' when you die - so if you happen to be posting GTA videoe, your descriptions might end up lowering your credit score! Credit scores at the moment at least can be queried and mistakes corrected. This new kind of scoring will be opaque and unaccountable.