4 ms·

Seriously, is it true equifax in US "sells information about how much you earn" to anyone or is the article horribly misleading? I don't know about US, but some

Seriously, is it true equifax in US "sells information about how much you earn" to anyone or is the article horribly misleading? I don't know about US, but some time ago I had dealt with Equifax in UK (when getting a car loan for example, then when renting a flat) and I was told by the paperwork I was given to sign authorising them to run "a credit check" they'll get the following info only: - confirmation of your details including an address. - then they plug in the amount you want to borrow and depending on the financial institution doing the lending your data such as - any bad credit you might have including arrears, court judgements etc - amounts of existing credit you have (including CC, overdraft in your bank account. Etc). - regular in-payments in your bank accounts Gets collated and they get an answer: either yes, or no, and if no, there can be a different lender proposed with more flexibility, but higher cost of lending. The person running the "credit check" never sees any of the raw data except court judgements I think. So there you go, that's how it used to work in UK few years ago. Then, you may ask, how does equifax get access to this data? Any bank account or credit product you get in UK contains a contractual agreement that the information about it will be passed to equifax(or credit rating agencies). This includes amounts you pay into your bank account every month, but is it from employment, or your rich grandma sending you gifts equifax can't tell. To me this sounds fairly reasonable. Especially that I can create my own login for equifax and see who has been running checks on my data and why(it requires one's permission). This sounds very different than "selling your data to the highest bidder". Right?

alistairSH 4y ago
Not sure about Equifax specifically, but yes, several of the credit agencies also sell salary info. HR departments can use to see what you earn currently before making a job offer, etc. It's awful.
Tangurena2 4y ago
The point behind the GDPR was that you own the data about yourself. And if the data is incorrect, you are able to get it corrected. In contrast, in the US, you own none of the data about yourself - many court decisions have basically ruled that whoever owns the computer (inside which the data is stored) owns that data. And if the data is wrong, only in certain limited areas (such as credit history) are you able to get it corrected. Thanks to Brexit, your country is migrating towards the US idea of data ownership.
pavlov 4y ago
The UK still retains EU data protection laws whereas the US essentially never had any. Having lived in both countries, the American companies are totally flagrant in how they sell and abuse your personal data. Banks will sell your credit card transactions to advertisers, for example. The UK credit score was a reasonable and stable evaluation of my credit-worthiness based on data from my bank, but its American counterpart is a gamified setup that goes up and down randomly every month and is seemingly designed to make people take unnecessary debt. And so on.

alistairSH 4y ago

Not sure about Equifax specifically, but yes, several of the credit agencies also sell salary info. HR departments can use to see what you earn currently before making a job offer, etc. It's awful.

Tangurena2 4y ago

The point behind the GDPR was that you own the data about yourself. And if the data is incorrect, you are able to get it corrected. In contrast, in the US, you own none of the data about yourself - many court decisions have basically ruled that whoever owns the computer (inside which the data is stored) owns that data. And if the data is wrong, only in certain limited areas (such as credit history) are you able to get it corrected. Thanks to Brexit, your country is migrating towards the US idea of data ownership.

pavlov 4y ago

The UK still retains EU data protection laws whereas the US essentially never had any. Having lived in both countries, the American companies are totally flagrant in how they sell and abuse your personal data. Banks will sell your credit card transactions to advertisers, for example. The UK credit score was a reasonable and stable evaluation of my credit-worthiness based on data from my bank, but its American counterpart is a gamified setup that goes up and down randomly every month and is seemingly designed to make people take unnecessary debt. And so on.