6 ms·

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

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.

mattmanser 7y ago
It's a recent thing, in the last 30/40 years and I also thought that I read it's efficacy was quite questionable, but could be wrong.
amluto 7y ago
> 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. No, this is only true because the law does not meaningfully restrict abusive contracts. Sure, a credit card issuer should [0] be able to ask some agency for information on your credit risk. It does not follow at all that the issuer should have permission to give information back to the agency. [0] Even this is debatable. One might reasonably argue that the use of inscrutable conditions for the issuance of credit cards is discriminatory and should, as a matter of public policy, be disallowed. As a simple example of how this could work, all credit card issuers could be required to instead issue prepaid cards with identical terms, benefits, and usage from a merchant’s perspective, and credit could be an opt-in extra feature.
- g051051 7y ago
  > It does not follow at all that the issuer should have permission to give information back to the agency. The agreements you sign when requesting and getting credit explicitly grant that right.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Nothing is really “explicit” when it’s buried in pages of small print legalese. If everyone just read (forget understood, just read) everything they ever signed or agreed to thoroughly, life would slow down significantly.
    - innocenat 7y ago
      Many CC contracts I have signed (not US or EU banks) have explicit section and additional (mandatory) signature specifically for sharing data with credit reporting company.
    - g051051 7y ago
      Take a look at a CC application and see where the information on going to a CRA is. I just went to a random online store and started a CC application. Down in the legal section, right in the first couple of sections, clearly visible: "Credit Reports: You agree that we have a right to obtain a credit report in connection with our review of your application and after we establish an account, to administer the account. You agree that we may report to others our credit experience with you. At your request we will provide the name and address of each consumer-reporting agency from which we obtained a report about you." Was it plastered across the very top of the form in bold type? No. Was it "buried in pages of small print legalese"? No.
- koolba 7y ago
  At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such. There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.
  - craftinator 7y ago
    > At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such. > There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you. Until you get too large, powerful, and rich, then the government regulates you. This is the purpose of regulation, to control the abusive use of power.
- tbyehl 7y ago
  How would 'some agency' have anything to say about your credit risk if issuers of credit weren't feeding them information about your credit performance? What's more bothersome to me is that these companies are scooping up every bit of information they can about me and selling it to anyone. Did I consent to TheWorkNumber? I definitely did not with the first few employers / payroll processors who have sold out my payroll data. I Google my full name and the first hit is some background check site that shows my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, and that's just the bait to get someone to pay for whatever else they know about me... 'Credit' information is the tip of the iceberg.
  - g051051 7y ago
    > my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, Your existence in the world isn't a secret. Every scrap of that is public information. You have a postal address to get mail, you register your car with your state to pay taxes on it, etc.
    - mLuby 7y ago
      But it really doesn't need to be. Maaaaaybe birth certificates should be public, but why should who owns what car be public? Or who lives at what address?
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      Well, your point overlooks the points I was aiming for. 1. Any of those scraps of data have negligible value by themselves, but when they're aggregated and traded their value is vastly increased. 2. I don't have any choice in how those scraps of data were originally gathered and shared. Should I not to have an address? Pay my taxes? Register my vehicles?
      - g051051 7y ago
        1. Yes, that's true. The value increases, in that the more data that's available, the better the decisions that can be made. 2. So? Why should you have a choice in it? Those things are classified as public records, available to anyone.
hinkley 7y ago
It is, in a word, extortion.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  Yes and no. Yes because it is. No because you want something that someone else has (£€¥$) and that someone needs some kind of assurance that they could ever get their money back.
- g051051 7y ago
  Saying "I'm not going to loan you money if I can't be sure you'll pay it back" is not extortion.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    They are saying “nobody is going to loan you money if you don’t play our games”. There is no other party you can go to if you don’t like their behavior. A loan is shared risk. If it wasn’t there should be no interest payments above inflation and labor. Where is the line for invasiveness? I mean, if I knew a couple was having issues and they were in counseling, but they didn’t start until eight years in, that’s a bad sign and any therapist will probably tell you so. If a bank is allowed to know everything about you they will say no to a loan, probably killing the relationship once and for all. Similarly if they know he has a doctor appointment to look at the lump on his testicle. Predicting people’s lives are about to get very difficult and then forcing it to happen by rejecting or calling a loan is movie villain cruel. If I were their friend and knew about the marital strife, and they wanted to borrow money from me to do something expensive, my reaction would be no. It was always going to be no because I don’t loan money to friends unless I don’t want that friend. But what I’m going to say is, “besides, those two aren’t gonna be together in three years so how would I get my money back?” You want banks in your bedroom? Because by their logic this is useful information and if it’s available it would increase their profit margins... Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
    - lordlimecat 7y ago
p49k 7y ago
Credit checks are often required in job applications and almost always when renting a home; it’s not like you can opt out of those.
- g051051 7y ago
  They check all kinds of things, not just credit. Criminal record, job history, salary history, education, etc. How much of that should a prospective employer be "allowed" to check before deciding to hire you? Or a renter check before letting you live in their house? In both cases, they are taking on real risk. How else can they reduce that risk, without doing checks?
  - p49k 7y ago
    That’s beside the point of my post, which was to counter the claim that essentially stated, “you are only opted in to credit bureau tracking because you made the choice to take advantage of a product that is not essential in life”
    - g051051 7y ago
      But the requirement for the credit check is from the bank, renter, employer, etc. They aren't being forced to do that, other than the economics of risk.
- rubyskills 7y ago
  The tenant pool in lower income areas tend to have more issues. This is why landlords require background checks, pay stubs, credit score, references etc. Even start all of this, you can still get horrible tenants, but it certainly decreases the likelihood by a huge margin.
- em-bee 7y ago
  i have been renting in several countries, including the US and i have never been asked for a credit check, i have never seen or heard about that for jobs either. why would a job need a credit check? all i care is that you can do the work.

mattmanser 7y ago

It's a recent thing, in the last 30/40 years and I also thought that I read it's efficacy was quite questionable, but could be wrong.

amluto 7y ago

> 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. No, this is only true because the law does not meaningfully restrict abusive contracts. Sure, a credit card issuer should [0] be able to ask some agency for information on your credit risk. It does not follow at all that the issuer should have permission to give information back to the agency. [0] Even this is debatable. One might reasonably argue that the use of inscrutable conditions for the issuance of credit cards is discriminatory and should, as a matter of public policy, be disallowed. As a simple example of how this could work, all credit card issuers could be required to instead issue prepaid cards with identical terms, benefits, and usage from a merchant’s perspective, and credit could be an opt-in extra feature.

g051051 7y ago
> It does not follow at all that the issuer should have permission to give information back to the agency. The agreements you sign when requesting and getting credit explicitly grant that right.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Nothing is really “explicit” when it’s buried in pages of small print legalese. If everyone just read (forget understood, just read) everything they ever signed or agreed to thoroughly, life would slow down significantly.
  - innocenat 7y ago
    Many CC contracts I have signed (not US or EU banks) have explicit section and additional (mandatory) signature specifically for sharing data with credit reporting company.
  - g051051 7y ago
    Take a look at a CC application and see where the information on going to a CRA is. I just went to a random online store and started a CC application. Down in the legal section, right in the first couple of sections, clearly visible: "Credit Reports: You agree that we have a right to obtain a credit report in connection with our review of your application and after we establish an account, to administer the account. You agree that we may report to others our credit experience with you. At your request we will provide the name and address of each consumer-reporting agency from which we obtained a report about you." Was it plastered across the very top of the form in bold type? No. Was it "buried in pages of small print legalese"? No.
koolba 7y ago
At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such. There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.
- craftinator 7y ago
  > At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such. > There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you. Until you get too large, powerful, and rich, then the government regulates you. This is the purpose of regulation, to control the abusive use of power.
tbyehl 7y ago
How would 'some agency' have anything to say about your credit risk if issuers of credit weren't feeding them information about your credit performance? What's more bothersome to me is that these companies are scooping up every bit of information they can about me and selling it to anyone. Did I consent to TheWorkNumber? I definitely did not with the first few employers / payroll processors who have sold out my payroll data. I Google my full name and the first hit is some background check site that shows my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, and that's just the bait to get someone to pay for whatever else they know about me... 'Credit' information is the tip of the iceberg.
- g051051 7y ago
  > my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, Your existence in the world isn't a secret. Every scrap of that is public information. You have a postal address to get mail, you register your car with your state to pay taxes on it, etc.
  - mLuby 7y ago
    But it really doesn't need to be. Maaaaaybe birth certificates should be public, but why should who owns what car be public? Or who lives at what address?
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    Well, your point overlooks the points I was aiming for. 1. Any of those scraps of data have negligible value by themselves, but when they're aggregated and traded their value is vastly increased. 2. I don't have any choice in how those scraps of data were originally gathered and shared. Should I not to have an address? Pay my taxes? Register my vehicles?
    - g051051 7y ago
      1. Yes, that's true. The value increases, in that the more data that's available, the better the decisions that can be made. 2. So? Why should you have a choice in it? Those things are classified as public records, available to anyone.

hinkley 7y ago

It is, in a word, extortion.

HenryBemis 7y ago
Yes and no. Yes because it is. No because you want something that someone else has (£€¥$) and that someone needs some kind of assurance that they could ever get their money back.
g051051 7y ago
Saying "I'm not going to loan you money if I can't be sure you'll pay it back" is not extortion.
- hinkley 7y ago
  They are saying “nobody is going to loan you money if you don’t play our games”. There is no other party you can go to if you don’t like their behavior. A loan is shared risk. If it wasn’t there should be no interest payments above inflation and labor. Where is the line for invasiveness? I mean, if I knew a couple was having issues and they were in counseling, but they didn’t start until eight years in, that’s a bad sign and any therapist will probably tell you so. If a bank is allowed to know everything about you they will say no to a loan, probably killing the relationship once and for all. Similarly if they know he has a doctor appointment to look at the lump on his testicle. Predicting people’s lives are about to get very difficult and then forcing it to happen by rejecting or calling a loan is movie villain cruel. If I were their friend and knew about the marital strife, and they wanted to borrow money from me to do something expensive, my reaction would be no. It was always going to be no because I don’t loan money to friends unless I don’t want that friend. But what I’m going to say is, “besides, those two aren’t gonna be together in three years so how would I get my money back?” You want banks in your bedroom? Because by their logic this is useful information and if it’s available it would increase their profit margins... Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
  - lordlimecat 7y ago

p49k 7y ago

Credit checks are often required in job applications and almost always when renting a home; it’s not like you can opt out of those.

g051051 7y ago
They check all kinds of things, not just credit. Criminal record, job history, salary history, education, etc. How much of that should a prospective employer be "allowed" to check before deciding to hire you? Or a renter check before letting you live in their house? In both cases, they are taking on real risk. How else can they reduce that risk, without doing checks?
- p49k 7y ago
  That’s beside the point of my post, which was to counter the claim that essentially stated, “you are only opted in to credit bureau tracking because you made the choice to take advantage of a product that is not essential in life”
  - g051051 7y ago
    But the requirement for the credit check is from the bank, renter, employer, etc. They aren't being forced to do that, other than the economics of risk.
rubyskills 7y ago
The tenant pool in lower income areas tend to have more issues. This is why landlords require background checks, pay stubs, credit score, references etc. Even start all of this, you can still get horrible tenants, but it certainly decreases the likelihood by a huge margin.
em-bee 7y ago
i have been renting in several countries, including the US and i have never been asked for a credit check, i have never seen or heard about that for jobs either. why would a job need a credit check? all i care is that you can do the work.