8 ms·

It is pretty wild that people can take out credit in your name without the issuer of the credit doing their dd, and then it causes you trouble afterwards. They

by mymac 3y ago

It is pretty wild that people can take out credit in your name without the issuer of the credit doing their dd, and then it causes you trouble afterwards. They should be fined massively for every time that this happens.

samstave 3y ago
Before I actually had kids was the first .com bust... I was unemployed as were many in bay area and I filed for unemployment or medical (i cant recall now) but I was told that I was ineligible for benefits because I had a bunch of unpaid child support and other debts in Los Angeles... (never lived there, no kids at time, avoid LA all my life) It took me months to prove that I wasa childless, 20-something dork in bay area... nightmare - but any "credit" agency is scum
- Loughla 3y ago
  Not to be that guy, but I have one better. My nephew is now 20. When he was 5 we gifted him some cash in a savings account (to teach him about money stuff). We were immediately served notice that he was overdue on two mortgages. It took three years to get that straightened out (and find out that his ss# was already compromised). What a mess. What kind of an agency would see the ss#for a literal child and just think, yep, this is fine.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    Sounds kinda similar to a former coworker ~2 decades ago. Tried to get a mortgage, rejected, he obtained his credit file...and ~80% of the stuff in "his" credit report was for similar-named people (mostly living in the same part of the U.S.). Report said that he had purchased a house at age 5, based on the well-paid job he got at Ford Motor Co. at age 4, etc., etc.
    - jimt1234 3y ago
      It's pretty much impossible to get your free annual credit report these days. It used to be relatively painless, but now you get slammed with ads for credit monitoring or whatever useless products. Or, the website just doesn't work, redirect to a page telling you to send a letter to some rando PO box. I used to get my free credit report every year, but I stopped, which I'm sure is exactly what these scumbags want.
      - smcin 3y ago
        Which website (AnnualCreditReport.com? or the three bureaux' own sites? or some other third-party website (which?)) and what do you mean "the website" just doesn't work? Be aware there are tons of unaffiliated copycat websites claiming to be the official one and just want to serve you ads; don't use them. IME AnnualCreditReport.com was easy-to-use and never sends ads. It sounds like you were tricked into using something else. If you genuinely had an issue with AnnualCreditReport.com (unlikely), please do tell the FTC: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports
      - JoBrad 3y ago
        Have you tried this site? https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://www.annualcreditreport.com
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    LexisNexis Risk reported two inaccurate judgements in my risk report, preventing me from getting a mortgage in my name for almost a decade. It was finally settled in a class action, and I received a check for $625. I wish a terrible time to the individuals who were directly involved at LexisNexis, because someone, somewhere decided to just not care about their data hygiene because there was no incentive to. https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/ https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      I mean that's really what it comes down to, isn't it? The incentives. Why should any of them care? They make thousands of errors with regularity that cause millions of consumers endless hours of agony trying to get jobs, trying to buy homes, trying to buy cars, but like, we can't not use them. In my entire long life I have never once done business with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Yet each of them have an entire drawer's worth of data on me, all of which is stored incredibly insecurely, is rife with errors, and the only time I really hear from them is when they've once again screwed something up and have dropped it in my lap like a cat showing up with a dead bird: "Heads up, you gotta handle this." Like, name one thing they actually do right. Literally anything. I challenge anyone who reads this to name a single bad thing that would happen if all these leech companies got Thanos-snapped out of the universe tomorrow.
      - lr4444lr 3y ago
        Banks would have to find an alternative. And that's a vacuum which could be filled with worse actors. I keep close tabs with all 3 bureaus because that's the reality we live in.
        mooreds 3y ago
        > Banks would have to find an alternative. We might have worse actors or arbitrary decisions or more expensive loans. Or, why not, all three!
    - gottorf 3y ago
  - jacurtis 3y ago
    > My nephew is now 20. When he was 5... So that was 15 years ago when these mortgages were taken out in his name? Placing it between 2007 and 2008. That's basically right at the inflection point when the housing market had gotten out of control and started crashing down. This was caused because anyone could get a mortgage, regardless of whether they could afford it or who they were. The banks were accused of doing zero due diligence. In some cases no income verification, no identity verification, no job verification, etc.. You could take a mortgage out in your dogs name, and also apparently a 5 year old's name too. I like to think that the system is better now, but that's probably a fantasy.
  - bennettnate5 3y ago
    To make this worse, they won't even let you apply a credit freeze online until you're eighteen years old.
- swozey 3y ago
  I had this come up when I was buying a house. I have a very common name and some guy 20-30 years older than me had past due child support. I also have no kids. This was my first house purchase so I was completely ignorant of the process. What blew my mind is that before verifying whether or not that was me, they informed the sellers of it. I forget the process I went through to prove it wasn't me, I probably just showed them the guys age vs mine or something. That was wild though, like, the sellers could've just cancelled the sale right there if they didn't want to sell to a supposedly deadbeat dad. I couldn't believe they informed the sellers. Buying a house is awful. Telling someone all of my finances and everything else when I already have an approved mortgage. Ugh. I did have a worse experience SELLING that house though, if you can imagine.
  - prawn 3y ago
    What a miserable process. Worst thing is that these functions will increasingly be black boxes. You'll just get a negative result from the seller or buyer or landlord or bank and have no recourse. And that's especially unfair when we're talking about something as vital as shelter for decent citizens.
- qawwads 3y ago
  Let me rephrase it so the meaning of what you just said impregnate my mind: you were denier money because their records showed you badly needed it. Sound to me the credit agencies aren't the only evil.
rolobio 3y ago
Agreed. It is astounding to me that a private company can accuse me of a crime with no proof that I did it, and then the government will enforce that without question. You would think they would need fingerprints or something to prove that a particular person did something.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  How close does such an accusation come to defamation?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1kurac 3y ago
    One lawsuit away.
- lr4444lr 3y ago
  They're not accusing you of a crime, though. They're pinning debt on you. It's not just a pedantic difference either, because it means it falls under an entirely different body of law for assumption of liability.
emodendroket 3y ago
This is the magic of reconceptualizing fraud as "identity theft" in the first place.
- franga2000 3y ago
  There's a pretty funny sketch about that: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  It was never more than marketing for "identity theft protection". When you put it like that, it starts to sound an awful lot like paying a protection racket doesn't it?
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    That's ancillary; the biggest thing is offloading liability that would sensibly lie with the institution that lent money to a fictitious version of you.
rr808 3y ago
Is it actually a problem or are people just worrying about it? I dont see how a bank or court can enforce anything if you didn't do it.
- gzer0 3y ago
  It's a major concern. When someone steals your identity, they can incur debts, commit crimes, and manipulate data under your name. Victims often spend extensive time and energy clearing up the aftermath. While it seems counterintuitive, banks and institutions usually hold you liable until you can definitively prove the activity wasn't yours. Essentially, in the realm of identity theft, it's often 'guilty until proven innocent' rather than the other way around
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    It's more like "you spent it until you can prove you didn't", which might be worse.
  - rr808 3y ago
    Sure I can guess that too. I haven't ever seen anyone with problems though. Does it really happen? Given that nearly every SSN and address has leaked you'd think it would be everywhere.
    - bvirb 3y ago
      I had this experience after the Equifax hack a while ago when something like 100M+ people's info was stolen. Until I froze my credit I was getting phone calls every few days asking if I had _really_ tried to open some line of credit I had never heard of. The people calling me explained that ever since the Equifax hack they had to do a bunch more due diligence because all they were getting was fraud. No lines of credit were successfully opened in my name, and the issue stopped completely once I froze all my credit. I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.
    - 3y ago
codedokode 3y ago
In the West they give you money in someone's else name without an ID? Must be a paradise.
- caseysoftware 3y ago
  It's amazing what you can do without an ID in the States.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by mymac 3y ago

samstave 3y ago

Before I actually had kids was the first .com bust... I was unemployed as were many in bay area and I filed for unemployment or medical (i cant recall now) but I was told that I was ineligible for benefits because I had a bunch of unpaid child support and other debts in Los Angeles... (never lived there, no kids at time, avoid LA all my life) It took me months to prove that I wasa childless, 20-something dork in bay area... nightmare - but any "credit" agency is scum

Loughla 3y ago
Not to be that guy, but I have one better. My nephew is now 20. When he was 5 we gifted him some cash in a savings account (to teach him about money stuff). We were immediately served notice that he was overdue on two mortgages. It took three years to get that straightened out (and find out that his ss# was already compromised). What a mess. What kind of an agency would see the ss#for a literal child and just think, yep, this is fine.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  Sounds kinda similar to a former coworker ~2 decades ago. Tried to get a mortgage, rejected, he obtained his credit file...and ~80% of the stuff in "his" credit report was for similar-named people (mostly living in the same part of the U.S.). Report said that he had purchased a house at age 5, based on the well-paid job he got at Ford Motor Co. at age 4, etc., etc.
  - jimt1234 3y ago
    It's pretty much impossible to get your free annual credit report these days. It used to be relatively painless, but now you get slammed with ads for credit monitoring or whatever useless products. Or, the website just doesn't work, redirect to a page telling you to send a letter to some rando PO box. I used to get my free credit report every year, but I stopped, which I'm sure is exactly what these scumbags want.
    - smcin 3y ago
      Which website (AnnualCreditReport.com? or the three bureaux' own sites? or some other third-party website (which?)) and what do you mean "the website" just doesn't work? Be aware there are tons of unaffiliated copycat websites claiming to be the official one and just want to serve you ads; don't use them. IME AnnualCreditReport.com was easy-to-use and never sends ads. It sounds like you were tricked into using something else. If you genuinely had an issue with AnnualCreditReport.com (unlikely), please do tell the FTC: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports
    - JoBrad 3y ago
      Have you tried this site? https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://www.annualcreditreport.com
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  LexisNexis Risk reported two inaccurate judgements in my risk report, preventing me from getting a mortgage in my name for almost a decade. It was finally settled in a class action, and I received a check for $625. I wish a terrible time to the individuals who were directly involved at LexisNexis, because someone, somewhere decided to just not care about their data hygiene because there was no incentive to. https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/ https://www.lienandjudgmentdisputes.com/lang/en/
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I mean that's really what it comes down to, isn't it? The incentives. Why should any of them care? They make thousands of errors with regularity that cause millions of consumers endless hours of agony trying to get jobs, trying to buy homes, trying to buy cars, but like, we can't not use them. In my entire long life I have never once done business with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Yet each of them have an entire drawer's worth of data on me, all of which is stored incredibly insecurely, is rife with errors, and the only time I really hear from them is when they've once again screwed something up and have dropped it in my lap like a cat showing up with a dead bird: "Heads up, you gotta handle this." Like, name one thing they actually do right. Literally anything. I challenge anyone who reads this to name a single bad thing that would happen if all these leech companies got Thanos-snapped out of the universe tomorrow.
    - lr4444lr 3y ago
      Banks would have to find an alternative. And that's a vacuum which could be filled with worse actors. I keep close tabs with all 3 bureaus because that's the reality we live in.
      - mooreds 3y ago
        > Banks would have to find an alternative. We might have worse actors or arbitrary decisions or more expensive loans. Or, why not, all three!
  - gottorf 3y ago
- jacurtis 3y ago
  > My nephew is now 20. When he was 5... So that was 15 years ago when these mortgages were taken out in his name? Placing it between 2007 and 2008. That's basically right at the inflection point when the housing market had gotten out of control and started crashing down. This was caused because anyone could get a mortgage, regardless of whether they could afford it or who they were. The banks were accused of doing zero due diligence. In some cases no income verification, no identity verification, no job verification, etc.. You could take a mortgage out in your dogs name, and also apparently a 5 year old's name too. I like to think that the system is better now, but that's probably a fantasy.
- bennettnate5 3y ago
  To make this worse, they won't even let you apply a credit freeze online until you're eighteen years old.
swozey 3y ago
I had this come up when I was buying a house. I have a very common name and some guy 20-30 years older than me had past due child support. I also have no kids. This was my first house purchase so I was completely ignorant of the process. What blew my mind is that before verifying whether or not that was me, they informed the sellers of it. I forget the process I went through to prove it wasn't me, I probably just showed them the guys age vs mine or something. That was wild though, like, the sellers could've just cancelled the sale right there if they didn't want to sell to a supposedly deadbeat dad. I couldn't believe they informed the sellers. Buying a house is awful. Telling someone all of my finances and everything else when I already have an approved mortgage. Ugh. I did have a worse experience SELLING that house though, if you can imagine.
- prawn 3y ago
  What a miserable process. Worst thing is that these functions will increasingly be black boxes. You'll just get a negative result from the seller or buyer or landlord or bank and have no recourse. And that's especially unfair when we're talking about something as vital as shelter for decent citizens.
qawwads 3y ago
Let me rephrase it so the meaning of what you just said impregnate my mind: you were denier money because their records showed you badly needed it. Sound to me the credit agencies aren't the only evil.

rolobio 3y ago

Agreed. It is astounding to me that a private company can accuse me of a crime with no proof that I did it, and then the government will enforce that without question. You would think they would need fingerprints or something to prove that a particular person did something.

Aerroon 3y ago
How close does such an accusation come to defamation?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 1kurac 3y ago
  One lawsuit away.
lr4444lr 3y ago
They're not accusing you of a crime, though. They're pinning debt on you. It's not just a pedantic difference either, because it means it falls under an entirely different body of law for assumption of liability.

emodendroket 3y ago

This is the magic of reconceptualizing fraud as "identity theft" in the first place.

franga2000 3y ago
There's a pretty funny sketch about that: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E https://youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
Vicinity9635 3y ago
It was never more than marketing for "identity theft protection". When you put it like that, it starts to sound an awful lot like paying a protection racket doesn't it?
- emodendroket 3y ago
  That's ancillary; the biggest thing is offloading liability that would sensibly lie with the institution that lent money to a fictitious version of you.

rr808 3y ago

Is it actually a problem or are people just worrying about it? I dont see how a bank or court can enforce anything if you didn't do it.

gzer0 3y ago
It's a major concern. When someone steals your identity, they can incur debts, commit crimes, and manipulate data under your name. Victims often spend extensive time and energy clearing up the aftermath. While it seems counterintuitive, banks and institutions usually hold you liable until you can definitively prove the activity wasn't yours. Essentially, in the realm of identity theft, it's often 'guilty until proven innocent' rather than the other way around
- Tao3300 3y ago
  It's more like "you spent it until you can prove you didn't", which might be worse.
- rr808 3y ago
  Sure I can guess that too. I haven't ever seen anyone with problems though. Does it really happen? Given that nearly every SSN and address has leaked you'd think it would be everywhere.
  - bvirb 3y ago
    I had this experience after the Equifax hack a while ago when something like 100M+ people's info was stolen. Until I froze my credit I was getting phone calls every few days asking if I had _really_ tried to open some line of credit I had never heard of. The people calling me explained that ever since the Equifax hack they had to do a bunch more due diligence because all they were getting was fraud. No lines of credit were successfully opened in my name, and the issue stopped completely once I froze all my credit. I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.
  - 3y ago

codedokode 3y ago

In the West they give you money in someone's else name without an ID? Must be a paradise.

caseysoftware 3y ago
It's amazing what you can do without an ID in the States.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]