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Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? Do I need to contact all of my line item creditors and ask them to remove references to Equ

Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? Do I need to contact all of my line item creditors and ask them to remove references to Equifax?

username223 9y ago
> Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? No. Pay cash or get tracked.
- caio1982 9y ago
  Tracking is different than having your score data stored somewhere. Do you have a source for your "no" by the way? I'm genuinely curious.
  - username223 9y ago
    I don't have a source, but you are the subject of Equifax's business, not a participant, so you have very little say. They scrape public data, and buy data from credit card issuers, store "loyalty" programs, etc. For the little you can do, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_reporting_agency#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_reporting_agency#United... Note that there are all sorts of unregulated ways in which companies (e.g. Facebook) use CRA data.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    All of your consumer activity is sold to data brokers. All of your financial transactions involving credit instruments is sold to data brokers. They then package your data into a profile and sell it to marketers who want to target different demographic slices and compare against competitors. Most people don't have a listing in any phone books these days yet you can type in a name and get credible hits from whitepages.com. Where do you think they get that data on names and where people live when you've never had a business relationship with them?
  - astura 9y ago
    The "source" is 99.99% of financial-y things you do use data brokers, if not Equifax specifically. Got a bank account? You're in ChexSystem and/or Early Warning. Ever had a car loan? Credit card? Student loan? Mortgage? You're in TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, plus more. Got a job at a large company? Your more likely than not to be in The Work Number. Ever return an item to the store? You're probably in The Retail Equation. Ever have car insurance, renter's insurance, and/or home owner's insurance? You're in LexusNexis. It's virtually impossible, unless you live on a homestead completely off the grid, to avoid these data brokers knowing things about you.
- astura 9y ago
  Paying cash doesn't guarantee you won't end up in Equifax's databases. Your employer may report your income to The Work Number (owned by Equifax), your landlord may report your payment history, etc. Furthermore, your case of "pay cash" pretty much excludes you from higher education and home ownership. Unless you are super wealthy.
  - literallycancer 9y ago
    >Your employer may report your income to The Work Number (owned by Equifax), your landlord may report your payment history, etc. How is this legal?
    - astura 9y ago
      Because that information is no different than anything in your credit report. I forgot to mention the insurance companies have their own data brokers too. So you'll end up in there if you've ever had insurance.
      - craftyguy 9y ago
        So you have to be extremely wealthy in order to pay cash everywhere, pay the obamacare insurance penalty plus any medical costs paid for by you out of pocket in cash. Also, you cannot legally drive in most (all?) states in the US since they require having some form of insurance (typically 'liability' ins.) for your vehicle. Wow, it's impossible to not end up in any of these systems.
        astura 9y ago
        Correct, the only way to avoid it is to live completely "off the grid," cabin in the woods style. Paradoxically, if you were extremely wealthy you'd definitely want to purchase umbrella insurance to insure that wealth!! I should mention that when I said insurance I meant car, homeowners, renters, and umbrella insurance, not medical insurance. I don't know about medical insurance and what sorts of data brokers they may use. Banks use data brokers when you have a savings or checking account too.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
> Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? No. (EDIT: If someone has a better idea, please reply!) I filed a complaint with the CFPB with citations from their breach as well as congressional testimony requesting my credit file be removed. The response was boilerplate: "Thank you for contacting Equifax. We remain focused on consumer protection and committed to providing outstanding service and support. Protecting the security of the information in our possession is a responsibility we take very seriously and we apologize for the concern and frustration this cybersecurity incident causes. We have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers. Please refer to our dedicated website, https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com, for the latest information and updates or contact our dedicated call center at 866-447-7559. The call center was set up to assist consumers and is open every day (including weekends) from 7:00 a.m. – 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time." > Do I need to contact all of my line item creditors and ask them to remove references to Equifax? Even if you contact your creditors, Equifax is under no obligation to remove the data. Most credit lines have the possibility of falling off after 10 years (7 years for negative trade lines), but there is no obligation for them to be removed.
- existencebox 9y ago
  I'm honestly curious if Equifax would fall under GDPR regulations? I'm sure there's some overlap of EU citizens who have lines of credit in the US. We're having to prep for that at my corp currently, and it's VERY explicit about being able to pull up and remove all personal data, with some very hefty fines if you don't. EDIT: thought about this further and peeked at our guidelines, they may be able to get around this by the "data is integral to the function of the business" exemption, but I'd still wonder if someone could speak with authority on this.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > they may be able to get around this by the "data is integral to the function of the business" exemption That's probably more of an "integral to fulfilling its contractual obligations to those the data is about". It's more complicated than that, but the point is that you cannot simply declare it the purpose of your business to collect personal information and thus be exempt from data protrection regulation.
794CD01 9y ago
It's not your information in the sense of you having any ownership or control over it. It's just information about you. I got information about you by looking through your comment history. You cannot make me forget it. Lucky for you, I will anyway in a few minutes, since I am not in the business of selling that kind of information and thus don't really care.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  While what you say is factually true, does anyone else find it morally repugnant? The idea that information like your genetic code, behavioral data, photos of your likeliness, etc. might be owned by someone else strikes me as both slightly ridiculous and incredibly dehumanizing.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Which is precisely why this is handled completely differently in the EU. Essentially, data about you (personally identifiable information) is your data, people generally may not store or distribute it without explicit consent, and generally you may revoke consent at any time. There are exceptions and the details are complicated, of course, but the fundamental principle is much more sensible.
    - sova 9y ago
      Wow. This is great! US Privacy Laws would benefit to be at least this strong
      - spookthesunset 9y ago
        Its good as a person, but it is a pain in the ass for companies. Things like the domain name used in an email address can be considered PII because if the domain name was your name, that is PII... IP addresses can, in many cases, also be considered PII. Once something is PII, you as a company have to treat that data different--you have to be able to provide that data to the person and you have to be able to delete it. Basically, the overall idea is good (data about you should be owned by you) but mapping that into actual nuts & bolts implementation details is a huge pain in the ass.

Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? Do I need to contact all of my line item creditors and ask them to remove references to Equifax?

username223 9y ago

> Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? No. Pay cash or get tracked.

caio1982 9y ago
Tracking is different than having your score data stored somewhere. Do you have a source for your "no" by the way? I'm genuinely curious.
- username223 9y ago
  I don't have a source, but you are the subject of Equifax's business, not a participant, so you have very little say. They scrape public data, and buy data from credit card issuers, store "loyalty" programs, etc. For the little you can do, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_reporting_agency#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_reporting_agency#United... Note that there are all sorts of unregulated ways in which companies (e.g. Facebook) use CRA data.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  All of your consumer activity is sold to data brokers. All of your financial transactions involving credit instruments is sold to data brokers. They then package your data into a profile and sell it to marketers who want to target different demographic slices and compare against competitors. Most people don't have a listing in any phone books these days yet you can type in a name and get credible hits from whitepages.com. Where do you think they get that data on names and where people live when you've never had a business relationship with them?
- astura 9y ago
  The "source" is 99.99% of financial-y things you do use data brokers, if not Equifax specifically. Got a bank account? You're in ChexSystem and/or Early Warning. Ever had a car loan? Credit card? Student loan? Mortgage? You're in TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, plus more. Got a job at a large company? Your more likely than not to be in The Work Number. Ever return an item to the store? You're probably in The Retail Equation. Ever have car insurance, renter's insurance, and/or home owner's insurance? You're in LexusNexis. It's virtually impossible, unless you live on a homestead completely off the grid, to avoid these data brokers knowing things about you.
astura 9y ago
Paying cash doesn't guarantee you won't end up in Equifax's databases. Your employer may report your income to The Work Number (owned by Equifax), your landlord may report your payment history, etc. Furthermore, your case of "pay cash" pretty much excludes you from higher education and home ownership. Unless you are super wealthy.
- literallycancer 9y ago
  >Your employer may report your income to The Work Number (owned by Equifax), your landlord may report your payment history, etc. How is this legal?
  - astura 9y ago
    Because that information is no different than anything in your credit report. I forgot to mention the insurance companies have their own data brokers too. So you'll end up in there if you've ever had insurance.
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      So you have to be extremely wealthy in order to pay cash everywhere, pay the obamacare insurance penalty plus any medical costs paid for by you out of pocket in cash. Also, you cannot legally drive in most (all?) states in the US since they require having some form of insurance (typically 'liability' ins.) for your vehicle. Wow, it's impossible to not end up in any of these systems.
      - astura 9y ago
        Correct, the only way to avoid it is to live completely "off the grid," cabin in the woods style. Paradoxically, if you were extremely wealthy you'd definitely want to purchase umbrella insurance to insure that wealth!! I should mention that when I said insurance I meant car, homeowners, renters, and umbrella insurance, not medical insurance. I don't know about medical insurance and what sorts of data brokers they may use. Banks use data brokers when you have a savings or checking account too.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

> Is there any way for me to get my information removed from Equifax? No. (EDIT: If someone has a better idea, please reply!) I filed a complaint with the CFPB with citations from their breach as well as congressional testimony requesting my credit file be removed. The response was boilerplate: "Thank you for contacting Equifax. We remain focused on consumer protection and committed to providing outstanding service and support. Protecting the security of the information in our possession is a responsibility we take very seriously and we apologize for the concern and frustration this cybersecurity incident causes. We have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers. Please refer to our dedicated website, https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com, for the latest information and updates or contact our dedicated call center at 866-447-7559. The call center was set up to assist consumers and is open every day (including weekends) from 7:00 a.m. – 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time." > Do I need to contact all of my line item creditors and ask them to remove references to Equifax? Even if you contact your creditors, Equifax is under no obligation to remove the data. Most credit lines have the possibility of falling off after 10 years (7 years for negative trade lines), but there is no obligation for them to be removed.

existencebox 9y ago
I'm honestly curious if Equifax would fall under GDPR regulations? I'm sure there's some overlap of EU citizens who have lines of credit in the US. We're having to prep for that at my corp currently, and it's VERY explicit about being able to pull up and remove all personal data, with some very hefty fines if you don't. EDIT: thought about this further and peeked at our guidelines, they may be able to get around this by the "data is integral to the function of the business" exemption, but I'd still wonder if someone could speak with authority on this.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > they may be able to get around this by the "data is integral to the function of the business" exemption That's probably more of an "integral to fulfilling its contractual obligations to those the data is about". It's more complicated than that, but the point is that you cannot simply declare it the purpose of your business to collect personal information and thus be exempt from data protrection regulation.

794CD01 9y ago

It's not your information in the sense of you having any ownership or control over it. It's just information about you. I got information about you by looking through your comment history. You cannot make me forget it. Lucky for you, I will anyway in a few minutes, since I am not in the business of selling that kind of information and thus don't really care.

nostrademons 9y ago
While what you say is factually true, does anyone else find it morally repugnant? The idea that information like your genetic code, behavioral data, photos of your likeliness, etc. might be owned by someone else strikes me as both slightly ridiculous and incredibly dehumanizing.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Which is precisely why this is handled completely differently in the EU. Essentially, data about you (personally identifiable information) is your data, people generally may not store or distribute it without explicit consent, and generally you may revoke consent at any time. There are exceptions and the details are complicated, of course, but the fundamental principle is much more sensible.
  - sova 9y ago
    Wow. This is great! US Privacy Laws would benefit to be at least this strong
    - spookthesunset 9y ago
      Its good as a person, but it is a pain in the ass for companies. Things like the domain name used in an email address can be considered PII because if the domain name was your name, that is PII... IP addresses can, in many cases, also be considered PII. Once something is PII, you as a company have to treat that data different--you have to be able to provide that data to the person and you have to be able to delete it. Basically, the overall idea is good (data about you should be owned by you) but mapping that into actual nuts & bolts implementation details is a huge pain in the ass.