4 ms·

So my background in this is in consumer debt issues, largely dealing with banks, CC companies, and debt collection agencies. In my pre-HN days, I spent a lot o

by patio11 15y ago

So my background in this is in consumer debt issues, largely dealing with banks, CC companies, and debt collection agencies. In my pre-HN days, I spent a lot of time hanging out on a message board for folks who had issues with that, after having a credit report that got totally trashed because of a poorly chosen hash function causing my identity to collide with someone else's. Because I have really screwy hobbies I would write letters for folks to send to their banks. Add the two dozen letters I had to send for myself and I have personal knowledge that this definitively resolved the issue in 40+ cases, in many cases jumping over "our policy is to never...", "you can't do that", and collections at fairly advanced stages. It is entirely possible that Apple is a tougher nut to crack than BoA or Capital One, but that is not the way that I would bet. Edit: By the way, this is a catchphrase for me: bureaucracies are stage machines which take paper as input and return outcomes you want. Hackers should be comfortable with paper. Consider it an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to hack non-technical systems.

blantonl 15y ago
after having a credit report that got totally trashed because of a poorly chosen hash function causing my identity to collide with someone else's. I would love to hear more about this. Do you have a blog post or other online posting that describes what happened in this case?
- patio11 15y ago
  I do, but given that I discussed my personal financial situation and other thoughts pseudononymously a lot on that forum, I'm going to ask that you respect my privacy and not dig for it. The brief sketch: credit reporting agencies have Seriously Hard Problems (TM) in determining which identity to associate with an incoming piece of data. For example, suppose you have a file on a Patrick J. McKenzie who once lived in Chicago. You get a report from a hospital that a P.J. MacKenzie in an unspecified town in Illinois (not the actual guy) stiffed them on a $250 medical collection. They sold the debt to a debt collector who, having run a skip trace, determined that I am probably him, and they've reported the debt against my information directly. Do you merge those two identities? By the way, he's also delinquent on $100,000 in other debts. This sort of thing happens all the time in credit reporting. See my blog post regarding "names are hard."

by patio11 15y ago

blantonl 15y ago

after having a credit report that got totally trashed because of a poorly chosen hash function causing my identity to collide with someone else's. I would love to hear more about this. Do you have a blog post or other online posting that describes what happened in this case?

patio11 15y ago
I do, but given that I discussed my personal financial situation and other thoughts pseudononymously a lot on that forum, I'm going to ask that you respect my privacy and not dig for it. The brief sketch: credit reporting agencies have Seriously Hard Problems (TM) in determining which identity to associate with an incoming piece of data. For example, suppose you have a file on a Patrick J. McKenzie who once lived in Chicago. You get a report from a hospital that a P.J. MacKenzie in an unspecified town in Illinois (not the actual guy) stiffed them on a $250 medical collection. They sold the debt to a debt collector who, having run a skip trace, determined that I am probably him, and they've reported the debt against my information directly. Do you merge those two identities? By the way, he's also delinquent on $100,000 in other debts. This sort of thing happens all the time in credit reporting. See my blog post regarding "names are hard."