> So the bank of France partly is a centralized credit bureau. So going by that, it's actually more similar than different. Only by what data they gather, and

> So the bank of France partly is a centralized credit bureau. So going by that, it's actually more similar than different. Only by what data they gather, and this stems from what the data is needed for. There is vast difference in purpose, though: the Bank of France is (a) a public institution that (b) does not earn money solely by selling every personal data they could put hands on to just about anybody. The incentives are totally different from Equifax'. Note also that the data collected is not even remotely about everybody, as with Equifax.