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I signed up for the identity monitoring offered as part of the class-action lawsuit for the 2017 hack. Now I get an email whenever the developmentally disabled

by plorg 4y ago

I signed up for the identity monitoring offered as part of the class-action lawsuit for the 2017 hack. Now I get an email whenever the developmentally disabled guy who works at Hardee's moves to a new apartment, because 15 years ago he tried to have sex with a teenager when he was 20. Yeah, obviously not good, but what the hell does it have to do with my identity? None of these people have lived within half a mile of me, and they have no connection to me or any of the identifying data that Experian associates with me. And I know who they are, because they are already half the content of the police Twitter. Their website has an FAQ item asking specifically what unrelated sex offenders have to do with identity protection, and the answer is, "Many of our customers like getting these alerts". Literally no attempt to answer the question that they voluntarily added to their website. It turns out you literally cannot turn off sex offender notices (within an unspecified distance of your home) without turning off all notices for activity under your name, address, or SSN.

paulmd 4y ago
My mortgage servicer recently moved to a new system where it apparently has different password standards than the old system, and the frontend will filter it, and doesn't work properly with password managers, and it locks the account after 3 incorrect passwords. The only way to reset it is a call-in system which does not support mortgage accounts - it will not take a mortgage account number or SSN or a third-party-bank checking account number as being a valid identifier. So basically it is impossible for mortgage-only customers to ever reset a password once it's become locked out. Just start opening CFPB complaints and do your best to push all the buttons in the way that sets off the maximum alarm bells. Yes, this is preventing me from making my payment, why do you ask? Got a call from an "executive support team" two days later. Her answer was to just batter my way through the phone system until I got an operator because it was definitely, totally the right number... should go back and see if they ever actually fixed it, I ended up just knuckling under and using a short, insecure password that their system would actually accept, maybe I should see where the CFPB complaint is. But if you don't let up, CFPB complaints are a big deal and will absolutely get movement, they've definitely resolved "intractable" (read: bank couldn't be bothered reading the case notes after a half dozen times repeating it to them, even when I repeated it all for them) issues for me in the past. (I am on autopay but genuinely if something went wrong with my credit union or the mortgage system and I needed to get in, I would be fucked. Sure I could pay by check/paper coupon but I'd have to cancel the autopay first and I don't know if I can do that on the coupon either... it's really only the inertia of a few things still working right that actually did prevent problems with payments in general, so actually "problems with payment" isn't real far off.)

by plorg 4y ago

paulmd 4y ago

My mortgage servicer recently moved to a new system where it apparently has different password standards than the old system, and the frontend will filter it, and doesn't work properly with password managers, and it locks the account after 3 incorrect passwords. The only way to reset it is a call-in system which does not support mortgage accounts - it will not take a mortgage account number or SSN or a third-party-bank checking account number as being a valid identifier. So basically it is impossible for mortgage-only customers to ever reset a password once it's become locked out. Just start opening CFPB complaints and do your best to push all the buttons in the way that sets off the maximum alarm bells. Yes, this is preventing me from making my payment, why do you ask? Got a call from an "executive support team" two days later. Her answer was to just batter my way through the phone system until I got an operator because it was definitely, totally the right number... should go back and see if they ever actually fixed it, I ended up just knuckling under and using a short, insecure password that their system would actually accept, maybe I should see where the CFPB complaint is. But if you don't let up, CFPB complaints are a big deal and will absolutely get movement, they've definitely resolved "intractable" (read: bank couldn't be bothered reading the case notes after a half dozen times repeating it to them, even when I repeated it all for them) issues for me in the past. (I am on autopay but genuinely if something went wrong with my credit union or the mortgage system and I needed to get in, I would be fucked. Sure I could pay by check/paper coupon but I'd have to cancel the autopay first and I don't know if I can do that on the coupon either... it's really only the inertia of a few things still working right that actually did prevent problems with payments in general, so actually "problems with payment" isn't real far off.)