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Is Credit Karma considered credit monitoring? They email me when any events take place.

propogandist 7y ago
No, Credit Karma is a data mining front operation that takes the access you give them about your finances and sells them to other companies. Reliable financial data is hard for marketing companies to gather about individuals, CreditKarma solves that problem. If you read their privacy policy and ToS you'll learn they are able to sell your data as part of all the free services they provide you.
- sgc 7y ago
  You are correct on their business model, but I would think receiving alerts from them would count.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Despite their business model, I'd still recommend signing up as a fraud prevention measure. If you don't sign up, someone with a trivial amount of your info can sign up for an account and get more of your info, with the ultimate goal of identify theft.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > If you read their privacy policy and ToS you'll learn they are able to sell your data as part of all the free services they provide you. So my choices are let a 3rd party pay the credit agency for that info and I get nothing, or let CK pay the credit agency for that info and I get something for free. Sounds like CK is still the better deal.
  - propogandist 7y ago
    most credit cards give you credit reports for free different cards (banks) have relationships with different credit unions, if you have a diverse portfolio of cards, you can get more reliable data than CK direct from the Credit Union for free (or for the annual fee of your card)
- scarface74 7y ago
  Why would Credit Karma need to sell your data to other companies? Other companies already have the same high level access to your credit without you giving them permission to it. Credit Karma tries to sell you services based on your credit. Companies like Credit Karma or even companies like Facebook and Google don’t sell your data. They sell access to you based on the data they have. The distinction makes a big difference. If a law is passed saying that a company is not allowed to give out your data, it doesn’t really hurt companies.
  - propogandist 7y ago
    I'm not talking about just the credit angle, which is not as big of a threat as their recent schemes to "file your tax filings for free" -- this gets them access to very sensitive information that no one else can get access to, outside the IRS themselves. This is very valuable data to sell (esp with your credit information and other data). They did a MASSIVE campaign around the Tax Filings and many people simply 'opted in' because they had CreditKarma and it was Free, without realizing what they were trading away for 'Free'.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      I wouldn’t go anywhere near their tax filing.

No, Credit Karma is a data mining front operation that takes the access you give them about your finances and sells them to other companies. Reliable financial data is hard for marketing companies to gather about individuals, CreditKarma solves that problem. If you read their privacy policy and ToS you'll learn they are able to sell your data as part of all the free services they provide you.

sgc 7y ago
You are correct on their business model, but I would think receiving alerts from them would count.
dehrmann 7y ago
Despite their business model, I'd still recommend signing up as a fraud prevention measure. If you don't sign up, someone with a trivial amount of your info can sign up for an account and get more of your info, with the ultimate goal of identify theft.
jedberg 7y ago
> If you read their privacy policy and ToS you'll learn they are able to sell your data as part of all the free services they provide you. So my choices are let a 3rd party pay the credit agency for that info and I get nothing, or let CK pay the credit agency for that info and I get something for free. Sounds like CK is still the better deal.
- propogandist 7y ago
  most credit cards give you credit reports for free different cards (banks) have relationships with different credit unions, if you have a diverse portfolio of cards, you can get more reliable data than CK direct from the Credit Union for free (or for the annual fee of your card)
scarface74 7y ago
Why would Credit Karma need to sell your data to other companies? Other companies already have the same high level access to your credit without you giving them permission to it. Credit Karma tries to sell you services based on your credit. Companies like Credit Karma or even companies like Facebook and Google don’t sell your data. They sell access to you based on the data they have. The distinction makes a big difference. If a law is passed saying that a company is not allowed to give out your data, it doesn’t really hurt companies.
- propogandist 7y ago
  I'm not talking about just the credit angle, which is not as big of a threat as their recent schemes to "file your tax filings for free" -- this gets them access to very sensitive information that no one else can get access to, outside the IRS themselves. This is very valuable data to sell (esp with your credit information and other data). They did a MASSIVE campaign around the Tax Filings and many people simply 'opted in' because they had CreditKarma and it was Free, without realizing what they were trading away for 'Free'.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I wouldn’t go anywhere near their tax filing.