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We're all supposed to take it as just a fact of life now that we need a monitoring service for a service none of us opted in to. And who runs these monitoring

We're all supposed to take it as just a fact of life now that we need a monitoring service for a service none of us opted in to. And who runs these monitoring services? Why of course, it's the credit reporting companies! Who else would it be. So not only do they know when fraud is happening to you, but they will happily ruin your life while knowing and charge you for the privilege of knowing this is happening to you. And maybe, if you're lucky and the tiny font legalese text is in your favor, you can stop the flow of awful things happening to you at any given moment in time. Events which may just have all been started because Equifax didn't give a damn in the first place about the security of your private information.

greedo 7y ago
Unfortunately, most of us did opt in. If you look at the credit agreements we sign when we buy cars, open credit accounts, enter into a mortgage, we give the lender the privilege to share our data with these credit reporting companies.
- bootlooped 7y ago
  I read or heard a phrase for this recently and it's "consent theater".
  - hinkley 7y ago
    See also, "manufacturing consent"
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      That’s more of a term for propaganda as a tool of modern society, based on Chomsky’s work.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Free to make any choice, as long as its the choice already made for you.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- munk-a 7y ago
  I'm aware this is legally the case, but I think this is yet another sign that default opt-in isn't a legitimate agreement, society has become pretty litigious and I think some of the understanding around default opt-ins during enrollment for other services and third party data sales need to be revisited. I find them to be highly unethical and to generally result in a contract negotiated without compensation and any communication in good faith.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > society has become pretty litigious and I think some of the understanding around default opt-ins during enrollment for other services and third party data sales need to be revisited Are you saying these two ideas are related? If so, I don't quite see the connection -- can you expand a bit?
    - xvector 7y ago
      Credit reporting companies should burn.
    - iratewizard 7y ago
      Not that poster, but I believe what they're saying is that because we heavily use the law to structure society, it's time to use the law to remove an undesired aspect: default opt-ins.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    There is certainly no meeting-of-the-minds when it comes to EULAs, car loan applications and other such contracts.
  - g051051 7y ago
    This is not "default opt-in", like having the "Subscribe to our email newsletter" checked on an online order form. The sharing of credit worthiness information is the cornerstone of your ability to get credit. It's not a hidden extra, it's not something you can choose not to get, there's no "opt out". It's a condition of doing business with the credit grantor. It's like opting out of having a driver's license. If you want to drive, you have to have one.
- deckard1 7y ago
  Of course. But do you want to live without a house, a job, running water, electricity, internet, a cell phone, a car, etc.? Point a gun to my head and I'd still feel like I had a better chance of getting out of that situation than opting out of credit reporting.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Actually, that's an interesting thought - in areas where hookups to utilities are required by laws (usually described as "Grid Defection") for a residence to be legally occupied... if all that is true then is this opt-in really an opt-in even in an abstract legal sense - it would be illegal to reside in a detached house in the state without opting in to such a service.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  So I'm consenting by needing electricity? Water? a bank account? I though consent required option. Think of the other use of the word, generally reserved for sexual intercourse. Imagine that 'consent' having strings attached. Want to go to college? Consent. Want electricity? Consent. I think we can all agree this would be ludicrous. That Consent would not be real. It would be viewed for what it is: taking by force. It's why we don't even allow many actions when power is involved (subordinates). We view the power imbalance as so extreme, that invisible strings can form, thereby removing the ability for the subordinate to truly freely consent. As an American society, I think this is understood. We value consent in many places. Yet for some reason, the financial institutions can redefine consent as they see fit, blatantly attaching strings to basic survival needs.
- lakjdsflajk 7y ago
  Yeah, I guess you could take it further and say we all opted-in to be screwed over in various ways throughout life when we were born too. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight back against it.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > you could take it further and say we all opted-in to be screwed over in various ways throughout life when we were born too This is already a widely accepted theory usually called the "Social Contract".
    - harimau777 7y ago
      It seems to me that social contract theory is only valid if one can choose which society to live in or opt out of living in society. However, neither of those are the case in the modern world since there is no unclaimed land and immigration laws prevent people from changing societies.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    The credit score is a form of behavior modification tool. Some unseen force defined it, and then imposed it upon us. Comply, ideally excel, or be a social outcast (read: screwed). We had no say. We certinly had no vote. Yet it's a simply ubiquitous tool that cleanly defines the behaviour of some man. A relentless normalized nudge. The Man and his System FTW.
    - g051051 7y ago
      > We had no say. We certinly had no vote. Why should you? It's the credit grantors who use it. They say "when I grant credit to someone with a score of 800, I'm much less likely to lose money. If they have a score of 600, I'm far more likely to lose money." It's their money, your only say is whether you accept their terms or not.
      - chiefalchemist 7y ago
- idighkwjt 7y ago
  We may have agreed to allow a financier share our data with Equifax, but did not agree that those Equifax etc could be negligent in their handling/ release of it.
- Retric 7y ago
  Do you have an example? I don’t think they need this language legally, and I have not seen it in these agreements. Further, companies that buy debt make reports to credit agencies without having a contract with the individual. Granted, I could just not understand what’s in the contract.
- mceachen 7y ago
  Is a Standard Car Dealership or Mortgage Lender going to support you redlining an agreement, crossing out the sections you don't like (which include oversharing every and all morsel of data they can fetch from you)? No. The salesperson/CSR is going to be confused, and not even know how to proceed. In none of these cases did I opt in. And I decidedly couldn't opt-out.
  - harryh 7y ago
    Yes, if you want to borrow money, the person loaning you money is generally going to insist that you opt into the system that helps them understand if you are a good credit risk or not. That's not an unfair request on their part. Don't want to participate? Then don't ask for a loan.
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      Just be rich!
      - tbyehl 7y ago
        Rich people depend on credit more than anyone. They call it 'leverage.'
    - Lownin 7y ago
      We're told from an early age that we need to be college educated to be economically viable in the world of today and tomorrow. This may or may not be true, but public schools put a non-trivial amount of effort into convincing us it is. Most of us need loans to go to college. To me, this feels like a form of coercion to enter the credit system, either by way of economic realities, or heavy marketing to young people who are not equipped to defend against it.
    - harry8 7y ago
      A genuine alternative is to be able take your custom to one of the MANY other providers who aren't forcing you agree to conditions that are ridiculous. As soon as there is no alternative it's an industry cartel and we need to look at regulating. What is appropriate to determine credit worthiness? How about a blood sample? How much melanin do you have? Who did you vote for and we'll need that verified with a photo of your ballot. There's a million more totally unreasonable ways of determining your credit worthiness, some legal, some not but should be and you would choose not to submit if you could. You have agree to pay interest, on time and pay the loan back. -- ok that's not something you can reasonably opt out of and hope to get a loan. You have to agree to to have your life ruined on a whim or by incompetence because you borrowed $1k and paid it back in full with the interest? -- no, definitely not ok. In between the extremes are all the cases that need looking at. This is a standard case of market failure where you as a consumer have zero market power to effect your preference and your preference is more than reasonable. The GFC was one occasion where such a market failure really came home to roost. There are others, some are trivial, some are huge, most in between. Where it can ruin your life, utterly needlessly and the lives of others, possibly systemically across the whole economy, we tend to want to regulate it so that doesn't happen. There are many such examples in finance which is why we have regulated it in so many ways for so long. Sometimes the regulation will be effective, sometimes not, sometimes it will be fair, sometimes not, sometimes it will be captured by the powerful, hopefully mostly not. Without it, eh, we head for some big trouble, at worst class and civil warfare. (Separate but somewhat related note: "You need to agree to all future changes to this contract by your counter-party in all circumstances" - OH HELL NO that's not ok and should not be considered remotely legal, yet there it is in every single click through you've ever bothered to read and fail to understand on the internet because the click throughs (not contracts for mine) are simply not capable of being understood without the assistance of layers of courts, lawyers and judges - the law on them is not settled anywhere on earth as far as I'm aware. Unconscionable conduct in such things is the norm, pretending otherwise is silly no matter how libertarian I want to be about it and life in general.)
- notus 7y ago
  What is more unfortunate is that we're just okay with these practices.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  There's no much of choice, really. You can opt out by basically choosing to not partake in modern society.
- okcando 7y ago
  In general, I would say that this consent isn't informed and it's coerced, because you have to consent to do all those things and more which, in sum total, cannot realistically be avoided. Of course the courts are unlikely to fall on my side because the consequences for contract law would be apocalyptic but I believe it is true in my heart, and that's what really counts.
- tremon 7y ago
  But did you have the option to remove these onerous parts from the credit agreement? If not, you did not "opt in", you were coerced.
koolba 7y ago
They also refer to it as a “breach of customer data”. That’d only be true if there was a breach of their actual customers (i.e. the companies to which they sell your financial data).
freetobesmart 7y ago
there is no such thing a good credit unless someone can verify it. I can give all of my current credit cards in a background check, but what about the past ones I defaulted on??? Are you saying credit scores should not exist? Is it because you are a fraud that defaults alot and likes to steal money?
- danharaj 7y ago
  The honest don't like being treated like thieves.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  Credit scores are bs. My credit isn’t good. I’ve paid a lifetime total of approximately 10c (attempting to convert to $US) interest on credit cards and have never missed a bill - I pay them off before they arrive. 90%+ of my payments are credit card. My score reflects something other than my likelihood of paying back debt.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Update this post if you ever default on a loan. Otherwise, you are a good credit risk.
    - lurquer 7y ago
      He may be a good credit risk. But he's not s profitsble customer (if I'm reading the post correctly.) If you pay credit cards off early each month and don't pay interest, your score will be horrible. Nobody wants to lend to someone why merely pays back the principal... all the profit is made off the interest and late fees. My credit score was precisely 0 for many years. I didn't know until I went to buy a car. There was an incentive to get a spoiler and leather seat upgrade if I financed. But, the finance guy st the dealership said I didn't qualify due to a credit score of 0. Shook my head st the absurdity of this. Wrote a check and paid in full. Didn't get the free spoiler and seats. Insane that I can pay for a new car cash, yet don't qualify to finance it.
acdha 7y ago
The problem isn’t credit but the companies issuing loans without doing their due diligence. If they were routinely required to meet the normal levels of legal proof that you signed a contract or were liable for false claims, the entire system would change overnight. The awareness campaigns about identity theft, monitoring, etc. are all a distraction from the companies originating loans trying to shift the cost of their lax practices to everyone else.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The entire model of consumer loans is predicated on everyone else paying extra money to cover defaulters.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    It's one thing to price default into the risk of a note (this is cost of business as a lending institution). It's entirely another thing to price in egregious, arguably fraudulent business practices such as not properly verifying who you're lending to.
    - dreamcompiler 7y ago
      It's perfectly reasonable if you know there's no downside risk because the government not only will not punish you, but taxpayers will bail you out. Welcome to what they call capitalism these days.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        One should not be surprised when their economically rational but morally reprehensible business practice is regulated away.
panny 7y ago
>We're all supposed to take it as just a fact of life now that we need a monitoring service Yes. You do. Until China (in this case) and other nations stop hacking US companies.
fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
The best part? The "monitoring service" isn't protecting your money for the most part. You aren't responsible if someone defrauds a bank or credit card company with your information. If my credit card company thinks a service like this is valuable they should pay for it, I'll take whatever cash is on offer.
dwd 7y ago
Monitoring services should be baked into any online system that stores personally identifiable information. The GDPR requirements are a good example of what should be required by law. Any system you are required to provide information to should also allow you to see when your information is accessed and by whom. In most cases you should also have the option to deny access unless specifically granted. Unfortunately not providing access could result in not getting credit, insurance, or work as no company will take on the risk - but you have the choice to opt-out. Credit reporting services provided by the likes of Equifax and Experian particularily commercial rather than personal credit are critical to the current speed of the economy. Shutting them down would have a devestating effect on the economy.
tarsinge 7y ago
In France we don’t have credit scores and credit monitoring companies, but everytime you take a loan you are asked for a ton of proof of solvability, and basically give your full bank statements to the credit lender so that they can check your incomes vs spendings (and see what you spend on btw). Don’t know what’s worse.
- frereubu 7y ago
  This is a great 99% Invisible episode about how credit cards came about, and what it was like beforehand, where you would be interviewed at length by a store before being given credit to buy, for example, a piece of furniture. Credit cards were designed to outsource checking of credit-worthiness, stop intrusive interviews with stores and avoid embarrassment of being rejected in-store. Lax digital storage of information and consolidation in the credit rating industry seems to be the problem here, not credit ratings per se. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fresno-drop/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fresno-drop/ Everyone seems to like the idea of friendly local stores these days, but I also remember reading an interview with someone who was around when large chain supermarkets were starting. They loved the fact that they were relatively anonymous so people weren't able to gossip about you buying, for example, condoms. There's clearly a balance to be struck here, and it's well away from a sensible middle ground at the moment.
  - elcomet 7y ago
    Coming from Europe, it would never occur to me to buy furniture on credit, is this something common in the US ?
    - jdietrich 7y ago
      I'm also European, but buying furniture on credit is perfectly normal in my country - indeed, it would be quite unusual to buy any big-ticket item and not be offered credit terms, usually with an interest-free option.
      - 7y ago

greedo 7y ago

Unfortunately, most of us did opt in. If you look at the credit agreements we sign when we buy cars, open credit accounts, enter into a mortgage, we give the lender the privilege to share our data with these credit reporting companies.

bootlooped 7y ago
I read or heard a phrase for this recently and it's "consent theater".
- hinkley 7y ago
  See also, "manufacturing consent"
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    That’s more of a term for propaganda as a tool of modern society, based on Chomsky’s work.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Free to make any choice, as long as its the choice already made for you.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
munk-a 7y ago
I'm aware this is legally the case, but I think this is yet another sign that default opt-in isn't a legitimate agreement, society has become pretty litigious and I think some of the understanding around default opt-ins during enrollment for other services and third party data sales need to be revisited. I find them to be highly unethical and to generally result in a contract negotiated without compensation and any communication in good faith.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > society has become pretty litigious and I think some of the understanding around default opt-ins during enrollment for other services and third party data sales need to be revisited Are you saying these two ideas are related? If so, I don't quite see the connection -- can you expand a bit?
  - xvector 7y ago
    Credit reporting companies should burn.
  - iratewizard 7y ago
    Not that poster, but I believe what they're saying is that because we heavily use the law to structure society, it's time to use the law to remove an undesired aspect: default opt-ins.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  There is certainly no meeting-of-the-minds when it comes to EULAs, car loan applications and other such contracts.
- g051051 7y ago
  This is not "default opt-in", like having the "Subscribe to our email newsletter" checked on an online order form. The sharing of credit worthiness information is the cornerstone of your ability to get credit. It's not a hidden extra, it's not something you can choose not to get, there's no "opt out". It's a condition of doing business with the credit grantor. It's like opting out of having a driver's license. If you want to drive, you have to have one.
deckard1 7y ago
Of course. But do you want to live without a house, a job, running water, electricity, internet, a cell phone, a car, etc.? Point a gun to my head and I'd still feel like I had a better chance of getting out of that situation than opting out of credit reporting.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Actually, that's an interesting thought - in areas where hookups to utilities are required by laws (usually described as "Grid Defection") for a residence to be legally occupied... if all that is true then is this opt-in really an opt-in even in an abstract legal sense - it would be illegal to reside in a detached house in the state without opting in to such a service.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
So I'm consenting by needing electricity? Water? a bank account? I though consent required option. Think of the other use of the word, generally reserved for sexual intercourse. Imagine that 'consent' having strings attached. Want to go to college? Consent. Want electricity? Consent. I think we can all agree this would be ludicrous. That Consent would not be real. It would be viewed for what it is: taking by force. It's why we don't even allow many actions when power is involved (subordinates). We view the power imbalance as so extreme, that invisible strings can form, thereby removing the ability for the subordinate to truly freely consent. As an American society, I think this is understood. We value consent in many places. Yet for some reason, the financial institutions can redefine consent as they see fit, blatantly attaching strings to basic survival needs.
lakjdsflajk 7y ago
Yeah, I guess you could take it further and say we all opted-in to be screwed over in various ways throughout life when we were born too. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight back against it.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > you could take it further and say we all opted-in to be screwed over in various ways throughout life when we were born too This is already a widely accepted theory usually called the "Social Contract".
  - harimau777 7y ago
    It seems to me that social contract theory is only valid if one can choose which society to live in or opt out of living in society. However, neither of those are the case in the modern world since there is no unclaimed land and immigration laws prevent people from changing societies.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  The credit score is a form of behavior modification tool. Some unseen force defined it, and then imposed it upon us. Comply, ideally excel, or be a social outcast (read: screwed). We had no say. We certinly had no vote. Yet it's a simply ubiquitous tool that cleanly defines the behaviour of some man. A relentless normalized nudge. The Man and his System FTW.
  - g051051 7y ago
    > We had no say. We certinly had no vote. Why should you? It's the credit grantors who use it. They say "when I grant credit to someone with a score of 800, I'm much less likely to lose money. If they have a score of 600, I'm far more likely to lose money." It's their money, your only say is whether you accept their terms or not.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
idighkwjt 7y ago
We may have agreed to allow a financier share our data with Equifax, but did not agree that those Equifax etc could be negligent in their handling/ release of it.
Retric 7y ago
Do you have an example? I don’t think they need this language legally, and I have not seen it in these agreements. Further, companies that buy debt make reports to credit agencies without having a contract with the individual. Granted, I could just not understand what’s in the contract.
mceachen 7y ago
Is a Standard Car Dealership or Mortgage Lender going to support you redlining an agreement, crossing out the sections you don't like (which include oversharing every and all morsel of data they can fetch from you)? No. The salesperson/CSR is going to be confused, and not even know how to proceed. In none of these cases did I opt in. And I decidedly couldn't opt-out.
- harryh 7y ago
  Yes, if you want to borrow money, the person loaning you money is generally going to insist that you opt into the system that helps them understand if you are a good credit risk or not. That's not an unfair request on their part. Don't want to participate? Then don't ask for a loan.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    Just be rich!
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      Rich people depend on credit more than anyone. They call it 'leverage.'
  - Lownin 7y ago
    We're told from an early age that we need to be college educated to be economically viable in the world of today and tomorrow. This may or may not be true, but public schools put a non-trivial amount of effort into convincing us it is. Most of us need loans to go to college. To me, this feels like a form of coercion to enter the credit system, either by way of economic realities, or heavy marketing to young people who are not equipped to defend against it.
  - harry8 7y ago
    A genuine alternative is to be able take your custom to one of the MANY other providers who aren't forcing you agree to conditions that are ridiculous. As soon as there is no alternative it's an industry cartel and we need to look at regulating. What is appropriate to determine credit worthiness? How about a blood sample? How much melanin do you have? Who did you vote for and we'll need that verified with a photo of your ballot. There's a million more totally unreasonable ways of determining your credit worthiness, some legal, some not but should be and you would choose not to submit if you could. You have agree to pay interest, on time and pay the loan back. -- ok that's not something you can reasonably opt out of and hope to get a loan. You have to agree to to have your life ruined on a whim or by incompetence because you borrowed $1k and paid it back in full with the interest? -- no, definitely not ok. In between the extremes are all the cases that need looking at. This is a standard case of market failure where you as a consumer have zero market power to effect your preference and your preference is more than reasonable. The GFC was one occasion where such a market failure really came home to roost. There are others, some are trivial, some are huge, most in between. Where it can ruin your life, utterly needlessly and the lives of others, possibly systemically across the whole economy, we tend to want to regulate it so that doesn't happen. There are many such examples in finance which is why we have regulated it in so many ways for so long. Sometimes the regulation will be effective, sometimes not, sometimes it will be fair, sometimes not, sometimes it will be captured by the powerful, hopefully mostly not. Without it, eh, we head for some big trouble, at worst class and civil warfare. (Separate but somewhat related note: "You need to agree to all future changes to this contract by your counter-party in all circumstances" - OH HELL NO that's not ok and should not be considered remotely legal, yet there it is in every single click through you've ever bothered to read and fail to understand on the internet because the click throughs (not contracts for mine) are simply not capable of being understood without the assistance of layers of courts, lawyers and judges - the law on them is not settled anywhere on earth as far as I'm aware. Unconscionable conduct in such things is the norm, pretending otherwise is silly no matter how libertarian I want to be about it and life in general.)
notus 7y ago
What is more unfortunate is that we're just okay with these practices.
nkrisc 7y ago
There's no much of choice, really. You can opt out by basically choosing to not partake in modern society.
okcando 7y ago
In general, I would say that this consent isn't informed and it's coerced, because you have to consent to do all those things and more which, in sum total, cannot realistically be avoided. Of course the courts are unlikely to fall on my side because the consequences for contract law would be apocalyptic but I believe it is true in my heart, and that's what really counts.
tremon 7y ago
But did you have the option to remove these onerous parts from the credit agreement? If not, you did not "opt in", you were coerced.

koolba 7y ago

They also refer to it as a “breach of customer data”. That’d only be true if there was a breach of their actual customers (i.e. the companies to which they sell your financial data).

freetobesmart 7y ago

there is no such thing a good credit unless someone can verify it. I can give all of my current credit cards in a background check, but what about the past ones I defaulted on??? Are you saying credit scores should not exist? Is it because you are a fraud that defaults alot and likes to steal money?

danharaj 7y ago
The honest don't like being treated like thieves.
lostlogin 7y ago
Credit scores are bs. My credit isn’t good. I’ve paid a lifetime total of approximately 10c (attempting to convert to $US) interest on credit cards and have never missed a bill - I pay them off before they arrive. 90%+ of my payments are credit card. My score reflects something other than my likelihood of paying back debt.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Update this post if you ever default on a loan. Otherwise, you are a good credit risk.
  - lurquer 7y ago
    He may be a good credit risk. But he's not s profitsble customer (if I'm reading the post correctly.) If you pay credit cards off early each month and don't pay interest, your score will be horrible. Nobody wants to lend to someone why merely pays back the principal... all the profit is made off the interest and late fees. My credit score was precisely 0 for many years. I didn't know until I went to buy a car. There was an incentive to get a spoiler and leather seat upgrade if I financed. But, the finance guy st the dealership said I didn't qualify due to a credit score of 0. Shook my head st the absurdity of this. Wrote a check and paid in full. Didn't get the free spoiler and seats. Insane that I can pay for a new car cash, yet don't qualify to finance it.

acdha 7y ago

The problem isn’t credit but the companies issuing loans without doing their due diligence. If they were routinely required to meet the normal levels of legal proof that you signed a contract or were liable for false claims, the entire system would change overnight. The awareness campaigns about identity theft, monitoring, etc. are all a distraction from the companies originating loans trying to shift the cost of their lax practices to everyone else.

lonelappde 7y ago
The entire model of consumer loans is predicated on everyone else paying extra money to cover defaulters.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It's one thing to price default into the risk of a note (this is cost of business as a lending institution). It's entirely another thing to price in egregious, arguably fraudulent business practices such as not properly verifying who you're lending to.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    It's perfectly reasonable if you know there's no downside risk because the government not only will not punish you, but taxpayers will bail you out. Welcome to what they call capitalism these days.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      One should not be surprised when their economically rational but morally reprehensible business practice is regulated away.

panny 7y ago

>We're all supposed to take it as just a fact of life now that we need a monitoring service Yes. You do. Until China (in this case) and other nations stop hacking US companies.

fuzz4lyfe 7y ago

The best part? The "monitoring service" isn't protecting your money for the most part. You aren't responsible if someone defrauds a bank or credit card company with your information. If my credit card company thinks a service like this is valuable they should pay for it, I'll take whatever cash is on offer.

dwd 7y ago

Monitoring services should be baked into any online system that stores personally identifiable information. The GDPR requirements are a good example of what should be required by law. Any system you are required to provide information to should also allow you to see when your information is accessed and by whom. In most cases you should also have the option to deny access unless specifically granted. Unfortunately not providing access could result in not getting credit, insurance, or work as no company will take on the risk - but you have the choice to opt-out. Credit reporting services provided by the likes of Equifax and Experian particularily commercial rather than personal credit are critical to the current speed of the economy. Shutting them down would have a devestating effect on the economy.

tarsinge 7y ago

In France we don’t have credit scores and credit monitoring companies, but everytime you take a loan you are asked for a ton of proof of solvability, and basically give your full bank statements to the credit lender so that they can check your incomes vs spendings (and see what you spend on btw). Don’t know what’s worse.

frereubu 7y ago
This is a great 99% Invisible episode about how credit cards came about, and what it was like beforehand, where you would be interviewed at length by a store before being given credit to buy, for example, a piece of furniture. Credit cards were designed to outsource checking of credit-worthiness, stop intrusive interviews with stores and avoid embarrassment of being rejected in-store. Lax digital storage of information and consolidation in the credit rating industry seems to be the problem here, not credit ratings per se. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fresno-drop/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fresno-drop/ Everyone seems to like the idea of friendly local stores these days, but I also remember reading an interview with someone who was around when large chain supermarkets were starting. They loved the fact that they were relatively anonymous so people weren't able to gossip about you buying, for example, condoms. There's clearly a balance to be struck here, and it's well away from a sensible middle ground at the moment.
- elcomet 7y ago
  Coming from Europe, it would never occur to me to buy furniture on credit, is this something common in the US ?
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    I'm also European, but buying furniture on credit is perfectly normal in my country - indeed, it would be quite unusual to buy any big-ticket item and not be offered credit terms, usually with an interest-free option.
    - 7y ago