4 ms·
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
by 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 agoI 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."