5 ms·

First, that is not accurate. CreditKarma makes money by showing you ads for credit cards. Second, that is also not accurate. You are no more or less legally re

by harryh 7y ago

First, that is not accurate. CreditKarma makes money by showing you ads for credit cards. Second, that is also not accurate. You are no more or less legally responsible for the contents of your credit report based on whether you have recently pulled a copy.

mindslight 7y ago
Does CreditKarma actually run their ad targeting and delivery system entirely in house? Even if so, that is still one more surveillance company that has your dossier that otherwise wouldn't... And you're really going to have to back up that second point, because a very basic legal principle is having to respond to notices in a timely manner. If I have a private file on my computer that says "harryh owes me $100" for years, you can't possibly be responsible for that. If I send you a notice saying you owe me $100 for some plausible reason, and you don't refute it within a few months, you've now implicitly accepted that state of affairs and my case has grown much stronger. Knowing that the surveillance companies merely could be conspiring to defame me doesn't imply that I need to investigate their activities just in case. But as soon as I have knowledge that they actually are, then I am forced to either let that state of affairs stand or go after them for libel.
- harryh 7y ago
  If you go to a bank to get a loan and they say "No, your credit sucks" telling them "I've never seen my credit report before" isn't going to change anything.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Of course, because being a passive consumer who only asks a counterparty for your options never changes anything. What you say is "I need a copy of the exact information you're basing this decision on", and inform the bank and its sources what statements are actually not true. If the bank defers to trusting the surveillance bureaus, and the surveillance bureaus refuse to recant the false statements, then you have a strong case for libel with actual damages on top of the procedural recourse in the industry-written laws.
    - harryh 7y ago
      All of this is covered by the FCRA (fair credit reporting act). Yes, if there are mistakes in your credit report and you ask the CRA to correct them through designated channels they are obligated to fix things. However: 1) Whether you have previously seen your credit report or not is not relevant to this obligation. Most people will be better served by staying on top of things and getting errors corrected sooner rather than waiting to run into problems when applying for credit because: 2) Fixing things will take time. The CRAs are not obligated to act overnight, but instead on the order of 30 days or so. And depending on the exact nature of the errors, this can involve several sequential 30 day round trips. If you need a loan to, say, buy a house right now that's gonna be a bummer for you. 3) In the end, if the CRAs don't follow the rules it's not actually a problem of libel for them. They're much more likely to have a problem with their regulator than to be concerned with a private lawsuit. AFAIK no one has ever successfully sued a CRA for libel. People have tried and failed though. Frankly if you threaten to sue for libel you will not be presenting as professional[A] and you will hinder your cause. A. See https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Are you saying you'd have a strong case for libel because you have empirical data to back that up, or are you saying it because you think axiomatically that you should have a strong case?
      - mindslight 7y ago
        Not 'axiomatically', rather just naively from basic legal principles. In the same way that one would expect many police shootings to be prosecuted as voluntary manslaughter.
    - patio11 7y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but I likely have had more at-bats with the credit reporting agencies and financial institutions on this and related issues than almost all lawyers and, I mean this literally, every other person on HN. I think you will, if you consult an attorney, be advised that you are unlikely to prevail in your cause of action under a libel theory. Your lawyer is likely going to point to the pre-emption parts of FCRA, specifically 15 U.S.C. § 1681h(e) and 15 U.S.C. § 1681t(b). The general tenor of this conversation is going to be "When Congress wanted to regulate the credit reporting industries, they and interested parties made a trade: a very consumer-friendly state machine and freedom to operate the state machine. Part-and-parcel to this trade was radically reducing legal risks to the financial industry and CRAs outside of the state machine. If you're going to claim that Congress didn't want to pre-empt state laws, you're going to be walking uphill against legislative history, the plain text of the statute, and every canon of statutory construction." Separate from the legal issue, I think HNers might be surprised to learn that the state machine pretty routinely achieves the objectives. A determined, literate, and well-organized person will routinely achieve the outcome they desire from it, even with the other side of process being the largest lenders in America. This is a surprising result in consumer lending when reasoning from first principles ("Shouldn't Bank of America's legal team always or approximately always crush a Kansan grandmother?") but I believe, from a few hundred at-bats, it to be true.
inetknght 7y ago
> First, CreditKarma makes their money by spreading the surveillance profiles on you to other surveillance companies that wouldn't otherwise have that data. > First, that is not accurate. CreditKarma makes money by showing you ads for credit cards. Do you truly think that showing advertisements does not spread the surveillance profiles on you? Advertisement companies are exactly how and partly why those surveillance profiles were built in the first place.

by harryh 7y ago

mindslight 7y ago

Does CreditKarma actually run their ad targeting and delivery system entirely in house? Even if so, that is still one more surveillance company that has your dossier that otherwise wouldn't... And you're really going to have to back up that second point, because a very basic legal principle is having to respond to notices in a timely manner. If I have a private file on my computer that says "harryh owes me $100" for years, you can't possibly be responsible for that. If I send you a notice saying you owe me $100 for some plausible reason, and you don't refute it within a few months, you've now implicitly accepted that state of affairs and my case has grown much stronger. Knowing that the surveillance companies merely could be conspiring to defame me doesn't imply that I need to investigate their activities just in case. But as soon as I have knowledge that they actually are, then I am forced to either let that state of affairs stand or go after them for libel.

harryh 7y ago
If you go to a bank to get a loan and they say "No, your credit sucks" telling them "I've never seen my credit report before" isn't going to change anything.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Of course, because being a passive consumer who only asks a counterparty for your options never changes anything. What you say is "I need a copy of the exact information you're basing this decision on", and inform the bank and its sources what statements are actually not true. If the bank defers to trusting the surveillance bureaus, and the surveillance bureaus refuse to recant the false statements, then you have a strong case for libel with actual damages on top of the procedural recourse in the industry-written laws.
  - harryh 7y ago
    All of this is covered by the FCRA (fair credit reporting act). Yes, if there are mistakes in your credit report and you ask the CRA to correct them through designated channels they are obligated to fix things. However: 1) Whether you have previously seen your credit report or not is not relevant to this obligation. Most people will be better served by staying on top of things and getting errors corrected sooner rather than waiting to run into problems when applying for credit because: 2) Fixing things will take time. The CRAs are not obligated to act overnight, but instead on the order of 30 days or so. And depending on the exact nature of the errors, this can involve several sequential 30 day round trips. If you need a loan to, say, buy a house right now that's gonna be a bummer for you. 3) In the end, if the CRAs don't follow the rules it's not actually a problem of libel for them. They're much more likely to have a problem with their regulator than to be concerned with a private lawsuit. AFAIK no one has ever successfully sued a CRA for libel. People have tried and failed though. Frankly if you threaten to sue for libel you will not be presenting as professional[A] and you will hinder your cause. A. See https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Are you saying you'd have a strong case for libel because you have empirical data to back that up, or are you saying it because you think axiomatically that you should have a strong case?
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Not 'axiomatically', rather just naively from basic legal principles. In the same way that one would expect many police shootings to be prosecuted as voluntary manslaughter.
  - patio11 7y ago
    I am not a lawyer, but I likely have had more at-bats with the credit reporting agencies and financial institutions on this and related issues than almost all lawyers and, I mean this literally, every other person on HN. I think you will, if you consult an attorney, be advised that you are unlikely to prevail in your cause of action under a libel theory. Your lawyer is likely going to point to the pre-emption parts of FCRA, specifically 15 U.S.C. § 1681h(e) and 15 U.S.C. § 1681t(b). The general tenor of this conversation is going to be "When Congress wanted to regulate the credit reporting industries, they and interested parties made a trade: a very consumer-friendly state machine and freedom to operate the state machine. Part-and-parcel to this trade was radically reducing legal risks to the financial industry and CRAs outside of the state machine. If you're going to claim that Congress didn't want to pre-empt state laws, you're going to be walking uphill against legislative history, the plain text of the statute, and every canon of statutory construction." Separate from the legal issue, I think HNers might be surprised to learn that the state machine pretty routinely achieves the objectives. A determined, literate, and well-organized person will routinely achieve the outcome they desire from it, even with the other side of process being the largest lenders in America. This is a surprising result in consumer lending when reasoning from first principles ("Shouldn't Bank of America's legal team always or approximately always crush a Kansan grandmother?") but I believe, from a few hundred at-bats, it to be true.

inetknght 7y ago

> First, CreditKarma makes their money by spreading the surveillance profiles on you to other surveillance companies that wouldn't otherwise have that data. > First, that is not accurate. CreditKarma makes money by showing you ads for credit cards. Do you truly think that showing advertisements does not spread the surveillance profiles on you? Advertisement companies are exactly how and partly why those surveillance profiles were built in the first place.