16 ms·

The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

247 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

mayrm 10y ago
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mayrm 10y ago
BE SMART AND BECOME RICH IN LESS THAN 48 hours....It all depends on how fast you can be to get the new PROGRAMMED blank ATM card that is capable of hacking into any ATM machine,anywhere in the world. I got to know about this BLANK ATM CARD when I was searching for job online about a month ago..It has really changed my life for good and now I can say I'm rich and I can never be poor again. The least money I get in a day with it is about $30,000.Every now and then I keep pumping money into my account. Though is illegal, there is no risk of being caught ,because it has been programmed in such a way that it is not traceable, it also has a technique that makes it impossible for the CCTVs to detect you.. For details on how to get yours today, email the hackers on : (sourcescodes@hackermail.com ). Tell your loved once too, and start to live large. That's the simple testimony of how my life changed for good...Love you all ...the email address again is sourcescodes@hackermail.com
bluedino 10y ago
The credit reporting system probably wouldn't work if you had to have the account holder's 'permission' to add events to it - you have to do it in this automated way. Although it can be a pain, the responsibility of if your credit report is accurate falls on you, the consumer. You should many of the free services to check your credit and then dispute any events that aren't correct. Most people don't have issues but you can have companies that don't report payoffs (they should be fined or something), companies that assign accounts to the wrong person/SSN, etc.
- dhimes 10y ago
  Although it can be a pain, the responsibility of if your credit report is accurate falls on you, the consumer. I can only be responsible for the things I do. If some shithead wants to give third-party information about me it better be accurate, and if its inaccuracy causes me harm it should be actionable.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Exactly. If I spread false information about someone to their detriment, that is slander. How do credit reporting agencies get away with it?
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      Generally, (in the US) statements made in good faith and with reasonable belief that they are true are not going to be found slanderous.
    - HarryHirsch 10y ago
      Probably with carefully written laws, same as why we are seeing bogus DMCA requests all the time. Most crime has to be committed "knowingly", but if you automate your DMCA takedowns they can't catch you for perjury because you don't know what your system does.
  - gnopgnip 10y ago
    If a creditor incorrectly reports a debt after writing to the creditor and credit reporting company you can sue them under the FCRA for actual damages or the statutory $1000 per violation.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
'And 5 percent had errors that could be devastating, potentially denying lines of credit to them and making things like auto insurance prohibitively expensive. “To have that error level, it’s akin to 5 percent of automobiles spontaneously accelerating and having an accident, or 5 percent of planes falling from the sky,” Wu says. “We wouldn’t accept that error rate in other areas.”' This is a dishonest statement. Having your insurance be slightly higher isn't nearly as serious as having your plane fall out of the sky. And if only 5% of software had bugs, we'd call it one of mankind's greatest triumphs. The only thing in this article that concerns me is this statement: "Those two states denied his application after he failed a credit check[...]" The government shouldn't be allowed to depend on private companies to approve or reject you in this manner, because then a company like Experian is - in a small way - deciding the law. And Experian in particular is a foreign corporation(headquartered in Ireland), so it's doubly-problematic.
- waterphone 10y ago
  Multiple government systems rely on Experian for identity verification. If you don't have credit, you don't exist in the system according to the government. I've run into this personally with healthcare.gov and state medicaid applications, as well as commercial uses like Amazon Payments.
  - xanderstrike 10y ago
    Same. I complained about the rates I was given by my auto insurance company and they said it was because I had no credit. I told them I could easily pay 12 months up front, didn't matter. I told them I could prove my income was more than enough, didn't matter. They told me I should get a credit card. In order to get a service I'm required to have by the government, I had to have my name in a system run by private, for profit companies.
    - kmonsen 10y ago
      You don't actually need car insurance (I know, this mostly a technicality): http://www.dmv.org/insurance/alternatives-to-auto-insurance.php http://www.dmv.org/insurance/alternatives-to-auto-insurance....
kartan 10y ago
How much is this connected to not having a real id card? For me is always weird when you see things like "no flight lists" and it is just a list of names. In Spain or Sweden your ID will be listed and the rest of people named like you spared of being harassed. Another concept that I don't understand is that USA's social security number has to be kept secret or otherwise your identity can be stolen. How that is even possible? Doesn't your employer needs it? An ID card is not perfect. 40 years ago Spain issued some duplicated numbers, before computers were so prevalent, causing problems. But it solves a lot of problems. It always seems that private and public bureaucracy in the States is worst that it needs to be.
- halviti 10y ago
  While this makes perfect sense and works great in the rest of the world, ID numbers in the US have been talked about, but have faced resistance from two groups.. those that think that this is somehow an invasion of privacy, and those that think that this somehow correlates with the 'mark of the beast' and signals the end of humanity according to the bible. (not joking)
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Individual states already issue identification cards, and people use that all the time for this purpose. In a system like the US, I think it's better for the states to handle identification cards, not the federal government. There's a lot of details that go into identifying someone, and your local state is best equipped to handle that. To give a few examples: What's the procedure for changing your name? A lot of people change their name after marriage or divorce. Those are usually handled by the states, so adding a federal government in there raises the net complexity. Should people in Alabama be able to force the residents of California to put their original sex on a federal id card? I don't care, but other people do. It could be one of those pointless political distractions that's better left unanswered. If the federal government runs it, now they have to own or rent a bunch of land in every major city in every state so they can service id card requests. So it gives them a larger presence. I guess they could reuse social security offices, but they couldn't reuse state DMV offices which are the more natural choice.
sschueller 10y ago
The whole credit reporting system is a money making racket and there is zero interest in keeping the information in it accurate. No one is held responsible for mistakes and the suffering people go thought because of it.
- themartorana 10y ago
  Same goes for every credit rating agency in the country (world?). Remember all those AAA rated swaps? It is disturbing how the entire economic system is set up to make life harder on those it's hardest on. Poor, in debt, barely making ends meet? You're lucky if you can get a credit card for under 30% APR. Mortgage rates historically low? Not for you. Need a loan? Sucks to be you. Finally clawed your way out of debt, trying to get ahead? Tough shit, your credit report will haunt you for the better part of a decade.
  - wyager 10y ago
    > Poor, in debt, barely making ends meet? You're lucky if you can get a credit card for under 30% APR. What about that doesn't make sense? The person you described carries an incredibly high default risk. If credit scores are unfair to the poor, it's because they don't provide accessible way to fix errors. If your credit score is low because you're in excessive debt and unlikely to pay it off, then the credit scoring system is doing its job.
    - sbov 10y ago
      I don't think they're saying it doesn't make sense. The point is, we help those that don't need help, and hurt those that are already hurting. We give better rates to people with high credit scores, but people with low ones probably need it more. It can turn into a feedback loop where the only way out is some form of outside help.
      - wyager 10y ago
        Credit scores are not a charity mechanism; they are a way of estimating someone's default risk. People with low credit scores don't get high loan rates because their credit scores are low; they get high loan rates because they're probably extremely risky borrowers. If you want to help poor people, the way to do that is not to ask banks to take on irrational risk for no good reason. In fact, making loans more accessible to people who are in bad debt might actually be actively bad for them.
codegeek 10y ago
Some steps to monitor your credit (USA): 1. Signup for https://www.creditkarma.com https://www.creditkarma.com. Yes, you can argue about giving your credentials to a 3rd party company and they show you ads but credit karma sends me real time activity on my credit report FOR FREE. I get offers etc but I am happy since I can keep an eye on my credit report from all agencies. (except Experian who want you to pay them for report). 2. Get a free credit report once a year from https://https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://https://www.annualcreditreport.com 3. Get your FICO score from discover [0] for free OR Open a credit card with Citi cards [1] and I think for $95/Year fee, they give you free FICO score which is the score that majority of lenders use. There are many other companies that offer FICO score for a fee but this was a good way for me since I needed that type of card anyway. [0] https://www.discover.com/free-credit-score/ https://www.discover.com/free-credit-score/ [1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/FICO-Score https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/FICO-Score 4. Check your credit card and bank statements every few days. I do it once a week. It is a good habit. For this step, do it manually. Don't rely on mint or tools like that. Check the transactions manually. 5. Setup alerts with your bank/credit card for transactions with a certain threshold. For example, I have alerts for anything over $10. For under $10, see Step 4. This is another step in case you do have a fraud. 5. Don't give out your SSN or credit information to anyone unless absolutely sure. Never give these on a phone call with any company unless you know that you called that company and they need the info (example: health insurance etc). 6. If you ever get a call from a Collection Agency, do not give them your information right away. Lot of collection calls are plain fraud or incorrect. Ask them to send a letter with details (genuine ones will do anyway). Read this from FTC about debt collection to educate yourself https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection These steps will keep you safe for the most part. Fun fact about credit reports: See this video by John Oliver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k
- edoceo 10y ago
  #2 doesn't work. That site is super buggy and the Experian connection hasn't worked for 4+ years.
  - 10y ago
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
They need to be held criminally and civilly liable for promoting lies about a specific person with the specific intent to cause harm to that person. There's a similar problem with Google. I have the same name (and it's not that common) and same age as a disbarred attorney in Arizona. I always wonder how many times a new contact, or potential business partner, googles my name, finds the disbarred lawyer who was prosecuted for tax evasion, and decides not to do business with me. This wouldn't be a case of mis-information, but just of sloppy research.
sdenton4 10y ago
Class-action defamation suits to provide some incentive to protect consumers?
Asooka 10y ago
Here's something I've wanted to know for a while: How is a foreigner emigrating to the USA (or Canada I guess) supposed to function? We don't use credit cards in my country (we use direct debit cards) and I've never had any debt to my name. On the other hand, I've always paid all my bills on time. Do you get some sort of crappy default credit score given based on estimated factors, or are you SOL until you've lived long enough to establish a credit history?
- smnrchrds 10y ago
  Some credit card companies issue secured credit cards: they basically request a payment of e.g. 1000$ called security deposit and keep it in escrow (I think. IANAL) and in return they give you a credit card with a credit limit of 1000$. If you don't pay your credit card bills, they will cancel the credit card and use the security deposit to pay off the remaining balance. If you do pay all your bills on time, they release the security deposit after 6 months to 2 years based on the issuer. At this point you will have a credit report showing several months of prompt payment and a reasonable score. It is not perfect, but it is not that bad. It sucks having to have your money blocked in an account for a year though.
necessity 10y ago
More effective than any regulation would be a legal system that actually made it possible for the small guy to sue the big guy for damages.
- thechao 10y ago
  For instance: Time Warner Cable screwed up my cable package, charging me 220$ (a la carte) rather than 90$ (bundle). I contacted them, they admitted the mistake, and fixed the next month---I still ended up out 65$. I'd really like that money (moral imperative), but there's no legal way for me to seek relief for that small amount. If TWC messes up 1/50 accounts, once a year, for 50$, then they stand to make 500k--1mm$ a year just in my area. There's literally profit to be had between the legal cracks.
  - jackgavigan 10y ago
    That sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
  - sethammons 10y ago
    I know nothing about law, but I would think a class action lawyer could do a monthly or quarterly (or how ever long it takes for critical mass to be achieved) case on that and make decent recurring income I bet. Provide a site where folks can dispute their charge, and get back 50% of the disputed amount after the case is settled. Every month, the lawyer brings the same case against the "big guy" but with a new list of plaintiffs.
    - josephjrobison 10y ago
      Sounds similar to the Sprint class action lawsuit where customers were being charged minor amounts of extra money, but in aggregate it added up to a ton. Sprint lost that case and lost millions.
  - ianlevesque 10y ago
    Why not self-represent in small claims court?
benmarks 10y ago
If a credit reporting agency has incorrectly linked my profile with unsavory data, I do believe I'd skip straight past FCRA violation and go straight to a defamation lawsuit. This is libel.
Meegul 10y ago
When I turned 18, I decided that it would be a good idea to get a credit report from all three agencies just to check what was on there. I found that there were multiple accounts tied to my credit score from before I was born. Two of the credit agencies removed them fairly easily, but to this day, one of them has refused to remove the accounts. Why? Because I can't prove that I did not live in the area the account was opened in. Not being born yet has so far not been good enough. It's just been a process of me mailing them, waiting 6 months for them to respond with some request for some more information, repeat.
- aboonaboo 10y ago
  You should sue them
  - Meegul 10y ago
    The only reason why I haven't done that, is that the accounts actually have a positive impact on my credit. They're fraudulent, so I am taking action to remove them, but there have been no damages as a result. So, I don't really have a reason to sue other than to save me future hassle.
ufmace 10y ago
Speaking of credit annoyances, I've seen a lot of "dark patterns" appearing on the credit agency websites for ordering your Federally-mandated free annual credit report. Their workflow for getting the credit report is structured to push you towards signing up for some kind of monthly subscription to some monitoring service, to the point where it's very difficult to find the buttons to just get the free credit report. And if you do accidentally sign up for their monthly service, of course you can only cancel over the phone during business hours. Just waiting for them to start understaffing these call centers so that the waits extend past an hour...
- gcr 10y ago
  From what I've seen, CreditKarma doesn't have many dark patterns like that. It doesn't have to be this way.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    Credit sesame is also nice. Sure they upsell but how else are they going to cover costs?
- Karunamon 10y ago
  The trick there is to stay far away from the individual sites and only use annualcreditreport.com
  - schrodinger 10y ago
    I've had no problems with creditkarma
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    annualcreditreport.com takes you to the credit bureaus' websites, which themselves have the problem he's talking about.
- fragsworth 10y ago
  If you accidentally sign up for a monthly subscription, call your credit card company and tell them never to pay it and to charge back any fees, because it was too difficult to cancel.
ThomPete 10y ago
The US is as far as I know the only country in the world who have a positive creditscore system. At least in Europe it's mostly based on a negative creditscore i.e. you are trusted by definition but if you don't pay your bills you end up not being allowed access to credit. In the US they don't trust you per definition and instead you have to prove that you are good with money by basically creating debt and then paying it off. This is obviously to say the least absurdly backwards, but I believe there is a rational explanation and that is that the US is a country of immigration and so you had to find a way to allow foreign people without any history and no reason to trust them.
- rco8786 10y ago
  I'm curious why you think that is absurdly backwards. Not necessarily disagreeing, but it's not hard to justify wanting to see a history of repayment vs trusting by default.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money and I would question the validity of seeing people paying back limited debt to be indicative of ex. borrowing for a house. You could instead just look at the history of their debit card usage to figure out whether they are trustworthy. As I said though I understand why they do it, it's just not a very useful model IMHO but because it's big money and it's complex to change it most probably wont for now.
    - gareim 10y ago
      >It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money and I would question the validity of seeing people paying back limited debt to be indicative of ex. borrowing for a house. I don't think it's backwards. Debt is only a bad thing if you're being irresponsible about it, so it's like a weedout test. In the other system, can you just buy a house on credit with no credit history? If so, I just find that hard to comprehend. Also, re: your comment about foreign people, my dad had no issue with it, but maybe you're saying people that are not yet citizens?
PythonicAlpha 10y ago
In Germany, it was long years the custom, that when somebody asked the agency about his score, they in turn dropped his score. This is not legal anymore, as much I know, but still also in Germany, your fate is sometimes bound to the street, in which you live, instead of your own behavior.
MiguelVieira 10y ago
PSA: If, like me, you sign up on www.transunion.com to view your account, be aware that the sign-up process uses dark patterns to stealthily sign you up for a $19.95 / month subscription. The 'Cancel Membership' page is hard to find, but here it is: https://membership.tui.transunion.com/tucm/cancelMembership.page https://membership.tui.transunion.com/tucm/cancelMembership....
swayvil 10y ago
This a good argument for legally changing your name to a unique id.
DenisM 10y ago
I would think big data and machine learning could disrupt this industry completely, allowing much more accurate trustworthiness scores. Is anyone working on it? Seems like a lot of money just sitting on the table.
- trolla 10y ago
  There already are some companies in that space that are using big data and machine learning for credit scoring. A few that come to mind: http://hellosoda.com/ http://hellosoda.com/ http://bigdatascoring.com/ http://bigdatascoring.com/ In case of Hello Soda they are using social media data for credit scoring. PS I'm not associated with any of these companies.
puppetmaster3 10y ago
You have to take them to small claims each and every time.
MrFoof 10y ago
My father and I have the same first name and middle initial (but different middle names). As a result, I've spent at least 1 entire calendar month in the past decade to "disentangle" our credit reports. With Equifax it wasn't finally resolved until I showed up unannounced at a regional office in a suit. Yet again, we're entangled with TransUnion (after last resolving it 18 months ago), with me having to enter security questions as if I were my father in order to confirm my identity. The most maddening part is it is extremely difficult to talk to someone in the US if you have a problem with any of the large three bureaus.
jwatte 10y ago
If only every person could have a unique identifier that could be used everywhere as a primary key, so "name matches" weren't needed... Social security number as globally unique ID would actually improve security and accuracy in most areas of life! But numbers. Scary! What if I actually have something to hide?
andrewalanhacks 10y ago
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247 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

mayrm 10y ago

BE SMART AND BECOME RICH IN LESS THAN 48 hours....It all depends on how fast you can be to get the new PROGRAMMED blank ATM card that is capable of hacking into any ATM machine,anywhere in the world. I got to know about this BLANK ATM CARD when I was searching for job online about a month ago..It has really changed my life for good and now I can say I'm rich and I can never be poor again. The least money I get in a day with it is about $30,000.Every now and then I keep pumping money into my account. Though is illegal, there is no risk of being caught ,because it has been programmed in such a way that it is not traceable, it also has a technique that makes it impossible for the CCTVs to detect you.. For details on how to get yours today, email the hackers on : (sourcescodes@hackermail.com ). Tell your loved once too, and start to live large. That's the simple testimony of how my life changed for good...Love you all ...the email address again is sourcescodes@hackermail.com

mayrm 10y ago

bluedino 10y ago

The credit reporting system probably wouldn't work if you had to have the account holder's 'permission' to add events to it - you have to do it in this automated way. Although it can be a pain, the responsibility of if your credit report is accurate falls on you, the consumer. You should many of the free services to check your credit and then dispute any events that aren't correct. Most people don't have issues but you can have companies that don't report payoffs (they should be fined or something), companies that assign accounts to the wrong person/SSN, etc.

dhimes 10y ago
Although it can be a pain, the responsibility of if your credit report is accurate falls on you, the consumer. I can only be responsible for the things I do. If some shithead wants to give third-party information about me it better be accurate, and if its inaccuracy causes me harm it should be actionable.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Exactly. If I spread false information about someone to their detriment, that is slander. How do credit reporting agencies get away with it?
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Generally, (in the US) statements made in good faith and with reasonable belief that they are true are not going to be found slanderous.
  - HarryHirsch 10y ago
    Probably with carefully written laws, same as why we are seeing bogus DMCA requests all the time. Most crime has to be committed "knowingly", but if you automate your DMCA takedowns they can't catch you for perjury because you don't know what your system does.
- gnopgnip 10y ago
  If a creditor incorrectly reports a debt after writing to the creditor and credit reporting company you can sue them under the FCRA for actual damages or the statutory $1000 per violation.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

'And 5 percent had errors that could be devastating, potentially denying lines of credit to them and making things like auto insurance prohibitively expensive. “To have that error level, it’s akin to 5 percent of automobiles spontaneously accelerating and having an accident, or 5 percent of planes falling from the sky,” Wu says. “We wouldn’t accept that error rate in other areas.”' This is a dishonest statement. Having your insurance be slightly higher isn't nearly as serious as having your plane fall out of the sky. And if only 5% of software had bugs, we'd call it one of mankind's greatest triumphs. The only thing in this article that concerns me is this statement: "Those two states denied his application after he failed a credit check[...]" The government shouldn't be allowed to depend on private companies to approve or reject you in this manner, because then a company like Experian is - in a small way - deciding the law. And Experian in particular is a foreign corporation(headquartered in Ireland), so it's doubly-problematic.

waterphone 10y ago
Multiple government systems rely on Experian for identity verification. If you don't have credit, you don't exist in the system according to the government. I've run into this personally with healthcare.gov and state medicaid applications, as well as commercial uses like Amazon Payments.
- xanderstrike 10y ago
  Same. I complained about the rates I was given by my auto insurance company and they said it was because I had no credit. I told them I could easily pay 12 months up front, didn't matter. I told them I could prove my income was more than enough, didn't matter. They told me I should get a credit card. In order to get a service I'm required to have by the government, I had to have my name in a system run by private, for profit companies.
  - kmonsen 10y ago
    You don't actually need car insurance (I know, this mostly a technicality): http://www.dmv.org/insurance/alternatives-to-auto-insurance.php http://www.dmv.org/insurance/alternatives-to-auto-insurance....

kartan 10y ago

How much is this connected to not having a real id card? For me is always weird when you see things like "no flight lists" and it is just a list of names. In Spain or Sweden your ID will be listed and the rest of people named like you spared of being harassed. Another concept that I don't understand is that USA's social security number has to be kept secret or otherwise your identity can be stolen. How that is even possible? Doesn't your employer needs it? An ID card is not perfect. 40 years ago Spain issued some duplicated numbers, before computers were so prevalent, causing problems. But it solves a lot of problems. It always seems that private and public bureaucracy in the States is worst that it needs to be.

halviti 10y ago
While this makes perfect sense and works great in the rest of the world, ID numbers in the US have been talked about, but have faced resistance from two groups.. those that think that this is somehow an invasion of privacy, and those that think that this somehow correlates with the 'mark of the beast' and signals the end of humanity according to the bible. (not joking)
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Individual states already issue identification cards, and people use that all the time for this purpose. In a system like the US, I think it's better for the states to handle identification cards, not the federal government. There's a lot of details that go into identifying someone, and your local state is best equipped to handle that. To give a few examples: What's the procedure for changing your name? A lot of people change their name after marriage or divorce. Those are usually handled by the states, so adding a federal government in there raises the net complexity. Should people in Alabama be able to force the residents of California to put their original sex on a federal id card? I don't care, but other people do. It could be one of those pointless political distractions that's better left unanswered. If the federal government runs it, now they have to own or rent a bunch of land in every major city in every state so they can service id card requests. So it gives them a larger presence. I guess they could reuse social security offices, but they couldn't reuse state DMV offices which are the more natural choice.

sschueller 10y ago

The whole credit reporting system is a money making racket and there is zero interest in keeping the information in it accurate. No one is held responsible for mistakes and the suffering people go thought because of it.

themartorana 10y ago
Same goes for every credit rating agency in the country (world?). Remember all those AAA rated swaps? It is disturbing how the entire economic system is set up to make life harder on those it's hardest on. Poor, in debt, barely making ends meet? You're lucky if you can get a credit card for under 30% APR. Mortgage rates historically low? Not for you. Need a loan? Sucks to be you. Finally clawed your way out of debt, trying to get ahead? Tough shit, your credit report will haunt you for the better part of a decade.
- wyager 10y ago
  > Poor, in debt, barely making ends meet? You're lucky if you can get a credit card for under 30% APR. What about that doesn't make sense? The person you described carries an incredibly high default risk. If credit scores are unfair to the poor, it's because they don't provide accessible way to fix errors. If your credit score is low because you're in excessive debt and unlikely to pay it off, then the credit scoring system is doing its job.
  - sbov 10y ago
    I don't think they're saying it doesn't make sense. The point is, we help those that don't need help, and hurt those that are already hurting. We give better rates to people with high credit scores, but people with low ones probably need it more. It can turn into a feedback loop where the only way out is some form of outside help.
    - wyager 10y ago
      Credit scores are not a charity mechanism; they are a way of estimating someone's default risk. People with low credit scores don't get high loan rates because their credit scores are low; they get high loan rates because they're probably extremely risky borrowers. If you want to help poor people, the way to do that is not to ask banks to take on irrational risk for no good reason. In fact, making loans more accessible to people who are in bad debt might actually be actively bad for them.

codegeek 10y ago

Some steps to monitor your credit (USA): 1. Signup for https://www.creditkarma.com https://www.creditkarma.com. Yes, you can argue about giving your credentials to a 3rd party company and they show you ads but credit karma sends me real time activity on my credit report FOR FREE. I get offers etc but I am happy since I can keep an eye on my credit report from all agencies. (except Experian who want you to pay them for report). 2. Get a free credit report once a year from https://https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://https://www.annualcreditreport.com 3. Get your FICO score from discover [0] for free OR Open a credit card with Citi cards [1] and I think for $95/Year fee, they give you free FICO score which is the score that majority of lenders use. There are many other companies that offer FICO score for a fee but this was a good way for me since I needed that type of card anyway. [0] https://www.discover.com/free-credit-score/ https://www.discover.com/free-credit-score/ [1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/FICO-Score https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/FICO-Score 4. Check your credit card and bank statements every few days. I do it once a week. It is a good habit. For this step, do it manually. Don't rely on mint or tools like that. Check the transactions manually. 5. Setup alerts with your bank/credit card for transactions with a certain threshold. For example, I have alerts for anything over $10. For under $10, see Step 4. This is another step in case you do have a fraud. 5. Don't give out your SSN or credit information to anyone unless absolutely sure. Never give these on a phone call with any company unless you know that you called that company and they need the info (example: health insurance etc). 6. If you ever get a call from a Collection Agency, do not give them your information right away. Lot of collection calls are plain fraud or incorrect. Ask them to send a letter with details (genuine ones will do anyway). Read this from FTC about debt collection to educate yourself https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection These steps will keep you safe for the most part. Fun fact about credit reports: See this video by John Oliver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRrDsbUdY_k

edoceo 10y ago
#2 doesn't work. That site is super buggy and the Experian connection hasn't worked for 4+ years.
- 10y ago

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

They need to be held criminally and civilly liable for promoting lies about a specific person with the specific intent to cause harm to that person. There's a similar problem with Google. I have the same name (and it's not that common) and same age as a disbarred attorney in Arizona. I always wonder how many times a new contact, or potential business partner, googles my name, finds the disbarred lawyer who was prosecuted for tax evasion, and decides not to do business with me. This wouldn't be a case of mis-information, but just of sloppy research.

sdenton4 10y ago

Class-action defamation suits to provide some incentive to protect consumers?

Asooka 10y ago

Here's something I've wanted to know for a while: How is a foreigner emigrating to the USA (or Canada I guess) supposed to function? We don't use credit cards in my country (we use direct debit cards) and I've never had any debt to my name. On the other hand, I've always paid all my bills on time. Do you get some sort of crappy default credit score given based on estimated factors, or are you SOL until you've lived long enough to establish a credit history?

smnrchrds 10y ago
Some credit card companies issue secured credit cards: they basically request a payment of e.g. 1000$ called security deposit and keep it in escrow (I think. IANAL) and in return they give you a credit card with a credit limit of 1000$. If you don't pay your credit card bills, they will cancel the credit card and use the security deposit to pay off the remaining balance. If you do pay all your bills on time, they release the security deposit after 6 months to 2 years based on the issuer. At this point you will have a credit report showing several months of prompt payment and a reasonable score. It is not perfect, but it is not that bad. It sucks having to have your money blocked in an account for a year though.

necessity 10y ago

More effective than any regulation would be a legal system that actually made it possible for the small guy to sue the big guy for damages.

thechao 10y ago
For instance: Time Warner Cable screwed up my cable package, charging me 220$ (a la carte) rather than 90$ (bundle). I contacted them, they admitted the mistake, and fixed the next month---I still ended up out 65$. I'd really like that money (moral imperative), but there's no legal way for me to seek relief for that small amount. If TWC messes up 1/50 accounts, once a year, for 50$, then they stand to make 500k--1mm$ a year just in my area. There's literally profit to be had between the legal cracks.
- jackgavigan 10y ago
  That sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
- sethammons 10y ago
  I know nothing about law, but I would think a class action lawyer could do a monthly or quarterly (or how ever long it takes for critical mass to be achieved) case on that and make decent recurring income I bet. Provide a site where folks can dispute their charge, and get back 50% of the disputed amount after the case is settled. Every month, the lawyer brings the same case against the "big guy" but with a new list of plaintiffs.
  - josephjrobison 10y ago
    Sounds similar to the Sprint class action lawsuit where customers were being charged minor amounts of extra money, but in aggregate it added up to a ton. Sprint lost that case and lost millions.
- ianlevesque 10y ago
  Why not self-represent in small claims court?

benmarks 10y ago

If a credit reporting agency has incorrectly linked my profile with unsavory data, I do believe I'd skip straight past FCRA violation and go straight to a defamation lawsuit. This is libel.

Meegul 10y ago

When I turned 18, I decided that it would be a good idea to get a credit report from all three agencies just to check what was on there. I found that there were multiple accounts tied to my credit score from before I was born. Two of the credit agencies removed them fairly easily, but to this day, one of them has refused to remove the accounts. Why? Because I can't prove that I did not live in the area the account was opened in. Not being born yet has so far not been good enough. It's just been a process of me mailing them, waiting 6 months for them to respond with some request for some more information, repeat.

aboonaboo 10y ago
You should sue them
- Meegul 10y ago
  The only reason why I haven't done that, is that the accounts actually have a positive impact on my credit. They're fraudulent, so I am taking action to remove them, but there have been no damages as a result. So, I don't really have a reason to sue other than to save me future hassle.

ufmace 10y ago

Speaking of credit annoyances, I've seen a lot of "dark patterns" appearing on the credit agency websites for ordering your Federally-mandated free annual credit report. Their workflow for getting the credit report is structured to push you towards signing up for some kind of monthly subscription to some monitoring service, to the point where it's very difficult to find the buttons to just get the free credit report. And if you do accidentally sign up for their monthly service, of course you can only cancel over the phone during business hours. Just waiting for them to start understaffing these call centers so that the waits extend past an hour...

gcr 10y ago
From what I've seen, CreditKarma doesn't have many dark patterns like that. It doesn't have to be this way.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  Credit sesame is also nice. Sure they upsell but how else are they going to cover costs?
Karunamon 10y ago
The trick there is to stay far away from the individual sites and only use annualcreditreport.com
- schrodinger 10y ago
  I've had no problems with creditkarma
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  annualcreditreport.com takes you to the credit bureaus' websites, which themselves have the problem he's talking about.
fragsworth 10y ago
If you accidentally sign up for a monthly subscription, call your credit card company and tell them never to pay it and to charge back any fees, because it was too difficult to cancel.

ThomPete 10y ago

The US is as far as I know the only country in the world who have a positive creditscore system. At least in Europe it's mostly based on a negative creditscore i.e. you are trusted by definition but if you don't pay your bills you end up not being allowed access to credit. In the US they don't trust you per definition and instead you have to prove that you are good with money by basically creating debt and then paying it off. This is obviously to say the least absurdly backwards, but I believe there is a rational explanation and that is that the US is a country of immigration and so you had to find a way to allow foreign people without any history and no reason to trust them.

rco8786 10y ago
I'm curious why you think that is absurdly backwards. Not necessarily disagreeing, but it's not hard to justify wanting to see a history of repayment vs trusting by default.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money and I would question the validity of seeing people paying back limited debt to be indicative of ex. borrowing for a house. You could instead just look at the history of their debit card usage to figure out whether they are trustworthy. As I said though I understand why they do it, it's just not a very useful model IMHO but because it's big money and it's complex to change it most probably wont for now.
  - gareim 10y ago
    >It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money and I would question the validity of seeing people paying back limited debt to be indicative of ex. borrowing for a house. I don't think it's backwards. Debt is only a bad thing if you're being irresponsible about it, so it's like a weedout test. In the other system, can you just buy a house on credit with no credit history? If so, I just find that hard to comprehend. Also, re: your comment about foreign people, my dad had no issue with it, but maybe you're saying people that are not yet citizens?

PythonicAlpha 10y ago

In Germany, it was long years the custom, that when somebody asked the agency about his score, they in turn dropped his score. This is not legal anymore, as much I know, but still also in Germany, your fate is sometimes bound to the street, in which you live, instead of your own behavior.

MiguelVieira 10y ago

PSA: If, like me, you sign up on www.transunion.com to view your account, be aware that the sign-up process uses dark patterns to stealthily sign you up for a $19.95 / month subscription. The 'Cancel Membership' page is hard to find, but here it is: https://membership.tui.transunion.com/tucm/cancelMembership.page https://membership.tui.transunion.com/tucm/cancelMembership....

swayvil 10y ago

This a good argument for legally changing your name to a unique id.

DenisM 10y ago

I would think big data and machine learning could disrupt this industry completely, allowing much more accurate trustworthiness scores. Is anyone working on it? Seems like a lot of money just sitting on the table.

trolla 10y ago
There already are some companies in that space that are using big data and machine learning for credit scoring. A few that come to mind: http://hellosoda.com/ http://hellosoda.com/ http://bigdatascoring.com/ http://bigdatascoring.com/ In case of Hello Soda they are using social media data for credit scoring. PS I'm not associated with any of these companies.

puppetmaster3 10y ago

You have to take them to small claims each and every time.

MrFoof 10y ago

My father and I have the same first name and middle initial (but different middle names). As a result, I've spent at least 1 entire calendar month in the past decade to "disentangle" our credit reports. With Equifax it wasn't finally resolved until I showed up unannounced at a regional office in a suit. Yet again, we're entangled with TransUnion (after last resolving it 18 months ago), with me having to enter security questions as if I were my father in order to confirm my identity. The most maddening part is it is extremely difficult to talk to someone in the US if you have a problem with any of the large three bureaus.

jwatte 10y ago

If only every person could have a unique identifier that could be used everywhere as a primary key, so "name matches" weren't needed... Social security number as globally unique ID would actually improve security and accuracy in most areas of life! But numbers. Scary! What if I actually have something to hide?

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