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Equifax and their "The Work Number" service limit your ability to negotiate a higher salary when you get a new job. The Work Number has your salary info — your

Equifax and their "The Work Number" service limit your ability to negotiate a higher salary when you get a new job. The Work Number has your salary info — your current employer gave it to them. And your new employer knows your current salary — they get it from The Work Number. If this isn't a serious violation of your privacy I don't know what is. https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/exclusive-your-employer-may-share-your-salary-equifax-might-sell-1b8173066 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/exclusive-your-employer-ma...

pxeboot 5y ago
And since governments themselves use it to look for tax and benefits fraud, they are unlikely to to do anything about it.
- lopis 5y ago
  This comment makes no sense to me. Why would the government need to buy this data from third party? Both employers and employees have to disclose this information to the government and if they don't match, there's a problem.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Who says they buy it? They probably just call up a buddy over at the NSA and have them send it over
  - pxeboot 5y ago
    States normally don't share data with each other or the feds. As an example, CA might use The Work Number to check if you are working in NV but not claiming or under reporting that income on your CA medicaid application.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      Local agencies (which often administer programs) very commonly DO NOT have easy direct access to your IRS tax filings. In addition - some people don't file returns that they should. In addition - sometimes their are crazy backlogs govt / IRS side (transcript services have been very off and on, 35 million paper filed returns still pending processing). Work number does pay day to pay day updates, so is current to within a few days usually.
      - visualradio 5y ago
        In that case, it sounds like it would be a good idea for the federal government to use the interstate commerce clause to start dismantling the work number system? The original purpose of the interstate commerce clause was to ban state and local governments from collecting sales taxes on transactions cross state lines, so that states had to compete to keep excise taxes as low as possible, and rely more on direct land taxes on property owners instead. This was because Madison and many of the other early federalists and democratic-republicans were influenced by the Physiocratic school of economics which thought there should be no internal taxes on trade and labor, that all internal taxes should be direct taxes on land. So if state and local payroll taxes and the work number system are the new rakeoff allowing state and local governments to fund property tax cuts for the rich, it would make sense for federal government to continue its grand historical tradition of using the interstate commerce to suppress this nonsense, in order to encourage any states with broken property tax systems that are struggling to raise revenue to appoint commissioners to redo their assessments instead, in order to discourage state and local governments from taking the easy way out and imposing regressive taxes on workers with the least leverage to complain.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Not at all true. Taxation, Labor, and Child Support agencies have real-time access to IRS data. The issue is more about privacy rules. Local governments have to compartmentalize data and avoid impermissible use. They often buy data from third parties because the data isn’t “infected” with IRS compliance rules.
        slownews45 5y ago
        The many nonprofits supporting this space are largely locked out. If you want to do a financial eligibility screening for anything - you are either in hoop jump hell to get access to IRS data OR you use a service that makes it damn easy to cross check. Luckily - in some cases you can send folks to go talk to someone at a child support agency or they do part of eligibility screening - but many of those folks never come back because they get gobbled up by the hassle factor over there (already disorganized / not stable in their situations). I've become convinced that some of the eligibility screening hoopjumping is just to save money by making it damn difficult to get through the paperwork - even if you are actually poor (which is often obvious). I remember when some programs went to QUARTERLY eligibility verification on services delivered quarterly - so every visit practically was a re-screen on eligibility (the overhead of this is monumental). So the desire / demand for private solutions to all this is there for sure. Some folks just do front-ends for systems like IRS transcript requests!
  - cyanydeez 5y ago
    they buy data under the stupid assumption that you gave it to whoever therefore its been legally made free game.
mywittyname 5y ago
But hey, when you win the inevitable class action lawsuit, you might get a $50 McDonalds gift card and a 1 year subscription to LinkedIn Premium.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  From Equifax? Fat chance. I'm sure many people would take the $50 McD gift card in a heartbeat. You're more likely to get 2-3 months of some sort of their protection service that will be "value-equivalent" to $50, not anything tangible or liquid in value.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    And in order to get it, you have to click through a ToS that allows them to share your salary with future potential employers.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  More like a $50 credit at Experian/Intuit/The Work Number(parent corp. Experian). It's pretty common for class actions to actually benefit the defendant when plaintiff lawyers take their $millions in exchange for driving more business towards the services they were fighting. Which then simply change their ToS to allow the behavior they were sued over anyway.
  - scrooched_moose 5y ago
    Man I was furious when the Zappos settlement a few years ago was a 10% off a future purchase coupon. I don't see any possible way that was a punishment. Never purchased anything with them since I saw that.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Heh I just got my $79 settlement from the last Equifax breach.
cptskippy 5y ago
Here's how to freeze this information: https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
- neilv 5y ago
  It seems transparently slimy how Equifax tries to discourage opting-out. Beyond the difficulty of opt-out, you have to send them more info (including your SSN, a copy of a government ID, and a proof of address that they offer can include your W-2 or paystub). If only Equifax were even 1% as diligent about avoiding data breaches as they are at making sure no one can maliciously opt you out of them sharing this data that no one wants shared.
csharpminor 5y ago
Their data can also be seriously flawed. When I went to apply for a mortgage a few years ago I was nearly rejected because "The Work Number" told my lender that I worked at Arby's and made $11.75 / hour. I've never worked for Arby's and my name is pretty unique (so I don't think it was a duplicate name issue). In any case I searched all 4 other people in the U.S. who share my name, and none of them had worked at Arby's either to the best of my knowledge. I had to call Equifax, spent 1.5 hours on the phone with multiple confused reps until I found someone who could change my record. I thought there would be some kind of validation process, but nope they just asked me where I worked and how much I made. It is such a broken system. I'm dumbfounded that Equifax hasn't been sued out of existence.
- karmelapple 5y ago
  Congress explicitly protected Equifax when they had the massive data breach. The government chooses winners and losers indirectly through legislation, but this time they explicitly picked a winner because they chose not to punish them or make new laws. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/equifax-breach-congress-unlikely-pass-new-rules-protect-consumer-data https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/equifax-breach-congress-... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equifax-data-breach-was-entirely-preventable-congressional-report-finds/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equifax-data-breach-was-entirel...
- thereare5lights 5y ago
  This seems odd. When I applied, they asked me for my W-2 to get my income.
sys_64738 5y ago
This data shows how much your gross is per pay period and shows all bonus payments.
jakelazaroff 5y ago
Wow. It’s shocking that this is legal.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Like it’s super super scummy but I can’t think of an a priori reason it would be illegal for me to share how much I’m paying an employee with a 3rd party. Since although my employee might want it to be secret it’s as much my information to tell as theirs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    Maybe in some anonymous form. Maybe. I absolutely don’t think “we’re paying Bob Smith $X,000” is an employer’s information to share.
interlocutor 5y ago
This page explains the problem with this very well: https://www.inlinereferencecheck.ca/blog/is-the-work-number-good-for-employees https://www.inlinereferencecheck.ca/blog/is-the-work-number-... Imagine for a moment that your current employer is paying you significantly less than the market value for your role based on your skills and experience, and attempts to request a review of your compensation have been rejected. You may then consider looking for work elsewhere. It’s likely that the question of your current salary will come up at some point during the interview process with a potential employer. What would you do in this situation? On the one hand, if you’re honest about how much you currently earn, the potential new employer may be reluctant to offer a significantly higher wage… even if it is the “market value”. On the other hand, if you exaggerate your current salary to reflect a figure that’s on-par with what you should be earning, you risk getting caught in a lie when that employer screens you using The Work Number. Clearly, neither situation is ideal.
- timeinput 5y ago
  In order to leave my current position I'd need an offer of $XXX. My current salary does not include additional side benefits that company X offers that you don't.
  - Smoosh 5y ago
    You could also make it clear that you are leaving your current position because you expect to be paid market rate or better.
  - tomarr 5y ago
    Also you can say you have other offers (or even go ahead with multiple applications) and therefore you want a competitive offer.
- jkaplowitz 5y ago
  > It’s likely that the question of your current salary will come up at some point during the interview process with a potential employer. This is why places like California and NYC have made this question illegal. Candidates can still volunteer this information if they want, and employers can verify it in that case. But, as another commenter already said, there are ways people can learn to deflect that question toward what they're looking for instead of what they're already making. Recruiters usually accept this after a certain amount of pushback, though not always.
foobarbazetc 5y ago
Not only do they have your salary info, they have it all broken down by frequency, gross pay, net pay, benefits, etc. You can also see which credit card issuers run an inquiry on The Work Number if you pull your file, but you don’t get any sort of notification and there’s no way to monitor it.

pxeboot 5y ago

And since governments themselves use it to look for tax and benefits fraud, they are unlikely to to do anything about it.

lopis 5y ago
This comment makes no sense to me. Why would the government need to buy this data from third party? Both employers and employees have to disclose this information to the government and if they don't match, there's a problem.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Who says they buy it? They probably just call up a buddy over at the NSA and have them send it over
- pxeboot 5y ago
  States normally don't share data with each other or the feds. As an example, CA might use The Work Number to check if you are working in NV but not claiming or under reporting that income on your CA medicaid application.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    Local agencies (which often administer programs) very commonly DO NOT have easy direct access to your IRS tax filings. In addition - some people don't file returns that they should. In addition - sometimes their are crazy backlogs govt / IRS side (transcript services have been very off and on, 35 million paper filed returns still pending processing). Work number does pay day to pay day updates, so is current to within a few days usually.
    - visualradio 5y ago
      In that case, it sounds like it would be a good idea for the federal government to use the interstate commerce clause to start dismantling the work number system? The original purpose of the interstate commerce clause was to ban state and local governments from collecting sales taxes on transactions cross state lines, so that states had to compete to keep excise taxes as low as possible, and rely more on direct land taxes on property owners instead. This was because Madison and many of the other early federalists and democratic-republicans were influenced by the Physiocratic school of economics which thought there should be no internal taxes on trade and labor, that all internal taxes should be direct taxes on land. So if state and local payroll taxes and the work number system are the new rakeoff allowing state and local governments to fund property tax cuts for the rich, it would make sense for federal government to continue its grand historical tradition of using the interstate commerce to suppress this nonsense, in order to encourage any states with broken property tax systems that are struggling to raise revenue to appoint commissioners to redo their assessments instead, in order to discourage state and local governments from taking the easy way out and imposing regressive taxes on workers with the least leverage to complain.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Not at all true. Taxation, Labor, and Child Support agencies have real-time access to IRS data. The issue is more about privacy rules. Local governments have to compartmentalize data and avoid impermissible use. They often buy data from third parties because the data isn’t “infected” with IRS compliance rules.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        The many nonprofits supporting this space are largely locked out. If you want to do a financial eligibility screening for anything - you are either in hoop jump hell to get access to IRS data OR you use a service that makes it damn easy to cross check. Luckily - in some cases you can send folks to go talk to someone at a child support agency or they do part of eligibility screening - but many of those folks never come back because they get gobbled up by the hassle factor over there (already disorganized / not stable in their situations). I've become convinced that some of the eligibility screening hoopjumping is just to save money by making it damn difficult to get through the paperwork - even if you are actually poor (which is often obvious). I remember when some programs went to QUARTERLY eligibility verification on services delivered quarterly - so every visit practically was a re-screen on eligibility (the overhead of this is monumental). So the desire / demand for private solutions to all this is there for sure. Some folks just do front-ends for systems like IRS transcript requests!
- cyanydeez 5y ago
  they buy data under the stupid assumption that you gave it to whoever therefore its been legally made free game.

mywittyname 5y ago

But hey, when you win the inevitable class action lawsuit, you might get a $50 McDonalds gift card and a 1 year subscription to LinkedIn Premium.

antisthenes 5y ago
From Equifax? Fat chance. I'm sure many people would take the $50 McD gift card in a heartbeat. You're more likely to get 2-3 months of some sort of their protection service that will be "value-equivalent" to $50, not anything tangible or liquid in value.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  And in order to get it, you have to click through a ToS that allows them to share your salary with future potential employers.
ineedasername 5y ago
More like a $50 credit at Experian/Intuit/The Work Number(parent corp. Experian). It's pretty common for class actions to actually benefit the defendant when plaintiff lawyers take their $millions in exchange for driving more business towards the services they were fighting. Which then simply change their ToS to allow the behavior they were sued over anyway.
- scrooched_moose 5y ago
  Man I was furious when the Zappos settlement a few years ago was a 10% off a future purchase coupon. I don't see any possible way that was a punishment. Never purchased anything with them since I saw that.
throwawayboise 5y ago
Heh I just got my $79 settlement from the last Equifax breach.

cptskippy 5y ago

Here's how to freeze this information: https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/

neilv 5y ago
It seems transparently slimy how Equifax tries to discourage opting-out. Beyond the difficulty of opt-out, you have to send them more info (including your SSN, a copy of a government ID, and a proof of address that they offer can include your W-2 or paystub). If only Equifax were even 1% as diligent about avoiding data breaches as they are at making sure no one can maliciously opt you out of them sharing this data that no one wants shared.

csharpminor 5y ago

Their data can also be seriously flawed. When I went to apply for a mortgage a few years ago I was nearly rejected because "The Work Number" told my lender that I worked at Arby's and made $11.75 / hour. I've never worked for Arby's and my name is pretty unique (so I don't think it was a duplicate name issue). In any case I searched all 4 other people in the U.S. who share my name, and none of them had worked at Arby's either to the best of my knowledge. I had to call Equifax, spent 1.5 hours on the phone with multiple confused reps until I found someone who could change my record. I thought there would be some kind of validation process, but nope they just asked me where I worked and how much I made. It is such a broken system. I'm dumbfounded that Equifax hasn't been sued out of existence.

karmelapple 5y ago
Congress explicitly protected Equifax when they had the massive data breach. The government chooses winners and losers indirectly through legislation, but this time they explicitly picked a winner because they chose not to punish them or make new laws. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/equifax-breach-congress-unlikely-pass-new-rules-protect-consumer-data https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/equifax-breach-congress-... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equifax-data-breach-was-entirely-preventable-congressional-report-finds/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equifax-data-breach-was-entirel...
thereare5lights 5y ago
This seems odd. When I applied, they asked me for my W-2 to get my income.

sys_64738 5y ago

This data shows how much your gross is per pay period and shows all bonus payments.

jakelazaroff 5y ago

Wow. It’s shocking that this is legal.

Spivak 5y ago
Like it’s super super scummy but I can’t think of an a priori reason it would be illegal for me to share how much I’m paying an employee with a 3rd party. Since although my employee might want it to be secret it’s as much my information to tell as theirs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  Maybe in some anonymous form. Maybe. I absolutely don’t think “we’re paying Bob Smith $X,000” is an employer’s information to share.

interlocutor 5y ago

This page explains the problem with this very well: https://www.inlinereferencecheck.ca/blog/is-the-work-number-good-for-employees https://www.inlinereferencecheck.ca/blog/is-the-work-number-... Imagine for a moment that your current employer is paying you significantly less than the market value for your role based on your skills and experience, and attempts to request a review of your compensation have been rejected. You may then consider looking for work elsewhere. It’s likely that the question of your current salary will come up at some point during the interview process with a potential employer. What would you do in this situation? On the one hand, if you’re honest about how much you currently earn, the potential new employer may be reluctant to offer a significantly higher wage… even if it is the “market value”. On the other hand, if you exaggerate your current salary to reflect a figure that’s on-par with what you should be earning, you risk getting caught in a lie when that employer screens you using The Work Number. Clearly, neither situation is ideal.

timeinput 5y ago
In order to leave my current position I'd need an offer of $XXX. My current salary does not include additional side benefits that company X offers that you don't.
- Smoosh 5y ago
  You could also make it clear that you are leaving your current position because you expect to be paid market rate or better.
- tomarr 5y ago
  Also you can say you have other offers (or even go ahead with multiple applications) and therefore you want a competitive offer.
jkaplowitz 5y ago
> It’s likely that the question of your current salary will come up at some point during the interview process with a potential employer. This is why places like California and NYC have made this question illegal. Candidates can still volunteer this information if they want, and employers can verify it in that case. But, as another commenter already said, there are ways people can learn to deflect that question toward what they're looking for instead of what they're already making. Recruiters usually accept this after a certain amount of pushback, though not always.

foobarbazetc 5y ago

Not only do they have your salary info, they have it all broken down by frequency, gross pay, net pay, benefits, etc. You can also see which credit card issuers run an inquiry on The Work Number if you pull your file, but you don’t get any sort of notification and there’s no way to monitor it.