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I have never heard of Pave before, but this just sounds like yet another copy of Equifax's "The Work Number" [1]. Basically, HR at many companies gives your sa
by atrettel 2y ago
I have never heard of Pave before, but this just sounds like yet another copy of Equifax's "The Work Number" [1]. Basically, HR at many companies gives your salary and employment history data to Equifax, who then sells access to the information to certain parties with supposed need to access it, including potential and current employers and creditors. This report is likely one of the most invasive consumer files out there for many people.
I cannot comment on the legality of this kind of data sharing, but as I and others have pointed out, it has existed for a while. I do agree that it is concerning. You can freeze your Equifax The Work Number report at least, just like other credit reports.
[1] https://theworknumber.com/ https://theworknumber.com/
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoI downloaded a personal report from the work number website and found to my horror that my employer was reporting every. single. paystub. gross and net, to equifax. That felt like a huge breach of privacy. Given that equifax had already proven incompetent at keeping my data secure, I immediately sent HR a request to stop sending my supposedly 'confidential' pay info. They politely told me to kick rocks, so I went on TWN's website and froze that report so no one would be able to request it, and it will be a cold day in hell before I thaw it.
- SoftTalker 2y agoDon't ever work in the public sector then. Your salary is public record, open to anyone who is curious enough to look.
- hypeatei 2y agoI think that's widely understood and part of the job description of being a public servant. What's not widely understood is HR secretly selling your data while working at a private company.
- hunter2_ 2y ago> your data Is it yours though? The employer could probably argue that it's theirs. Devil's advocate: I think it's widely understood that entities can be transparent with their data if they choose, other than NDA scenarios.
- Retric 2y agoMost companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
- dcrazy 2y agoSuch a “requirement” is illegal. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
- admissionsguy 2y agoor live in Sweden (where your earnings as well as your address and property, car or pet ownership are public record)
- f1shy 2y agoI’ve read about that. Is ipen to ANYbody? Is there a link? Thanks
- Wytwwww 2y agoIIRC in Norway at least everyone (who lives there) can check it but your name will be recorded and visible to that person.
- admissionsguy 2y agoMultiple websites resell the financial data for like $4 per check, for example https://www.ratsit.se/ https://www.ratsit.se/ (you can try with 'sven svennson') One can also just call the tax agency and ask. The person looking up the information does not need to provide their data. Living addresses, birth date, vehicles, pets are available in plain text without login and can be Googled.
- zdp7 2y agoThe information available via the public record is not as detailed (typically annual salary)and not definitively tied to any person. The Work Number is tied to your SSN and is much more detailed than the public record (each paycheck and a breakdown of different compensation).
- gperkins978 2y agoIn the US, most municipalities will publish each employee's compensation every year. You can literally look them up by name.
- zdp7 2y agoI think this is a little off, in that the data isn't coming from the various government entities or at least isn't required to be provided. I know at least in California most of the info is gathered by third parties using FOIA requests. It's also not associated with a SSN and just typically gives the annual compensation with limited categories. The Work Number on the other hand gets paycheck level details. Considering the data would be useless without a unique identifier, SSN is sent with it. Using The Work Number data, you could see pay period granularity changes to their compensation.
- olyjohn 2y agoHere is what Washington State does: https://fiscal.wa.gov/Staffing/Salaries https://fiscal.wa.gov/Staffing/Salaries Literally every single State employee's salary is listed here.
- TeaBrain 2y agoThat is exactly what they are saying. The public records typically contain annual compensation, not the detailed breakdown available via Work Number.
- gperkins978 2y agoPublic servants do not make enough money to be useful targets. The meaningful threat comes from large compensation tied to other asset information (tying an online person to that income, not difficult). You can buy lists of these already tied up and ready to download for your scheming pleasure. From English Rolex robbers to Florida kidnappers, they all enjoy the data. I do not think it can be stopped, but the days when a wealthy person could safely live in a suburb and have the kids imagine that they are middle class is long gone. It is terrifying. The best thing for a wealthy discrete person to do is move to Singapore or Australia, or somewhere with a sufficiently low crime rate to feel comfortable, or get quality security, which sucks.
- fragmede 2y agoThe security minded can move to a gated community, which are all over the place and have existed for a very long time, and don't require moving to Singapore or Australia to live in one.
- alasdair_ 2y agoI can't see a gated community being much of a deterrent to a gang of kidnappers sophisticated enough to use these services to find potential victims. Maybe if the gate has armed guards and a strict "no tailgating" policy with ID checks etc.
- Der_Einzige 2y agoThere's a whole industry for protection of high net worth individuals. The financially minded ex military special forces folks can often find lucrative jobs on places like silent professionals earning on the order of 500-1500$ a DAY for close protection of the kinds of folks who would be targeted for this stuff. Example: https://silentprofessionals.org/jobs/protection-agents-liaisons-east-asia/ https://silentprofessionals.org/jobs/protection-agents-liais...
- qwytw 2y agoWhich is fine. The problem is the imbalance of information and therefore bargaining power between workers and employers. With this information salary negotiation is like playing poker with your cards open so only thing it does is depress wages. That's not a problem for the public sector because both sides can see it and there is no real negotiation (you still save time/money by not having to go thought the interview process to figure out your potential compensation).
- Yizahi 2y agoThe problem is not public salary. In EU multiple countries have it public with noe issues to anyone. I'm outside of EU and also have my data public due to owning an LLC. The problem is identity fraud, and evil corpos like equifax plus some weird laws facilitate it way too much on a giant scale. This is what's infuriating.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iav 2y agoI am an investor in equifax. Let me clear up a misconception on where the data comes from. Half the data comes from large enterprise customers, who “sell” the data in exchange for Equifax doing I-9 verification for free. The other half comes from 39 payroll companies. Every single payroll company except for Rippling and Gusto sell paystub data to Euifax. (Rippling will start next year). Those are exclusive revenue share deals. You cannot be a competitive payroll provider without the revenue share from Equifax. So before you blame your employer, they might not be selling it directly and even if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it anyway.
- dsr_ 2y agoYou make an excellent argument here for tight regulation of the industry.
- Kon-Peki 2y ago… and the usage? Most highly-paid people have no idea how much privilege this affords them. You wonder why so many businesses are nice to you? It’s because they’ve already looked you up and know you’ve got a high income and are a millionaire. Write a personal check for your next automobile? Sure thing, you can drive it off the lot a few minutes later. They won’t even bother cashing the check for a week or two. Try doing something like that as an hourly worker, even if you’ve got the money in the bank.
- Guvante 2y agoThe finance companies are nice enough that it doesn't really matter. Bought mine with cash but realized it was Sunday and I didn't have a way to get a cashier's check from a savings account. They offered to put the down payment on a credit card and finance. Paid it off once I had access to the account. Ended up being a wash, the points were worth a little more than the percentage charge.
- dsr_ 2y agoThis is the view from a bubble I am not familiar with, and really don't care about.
- uriah 2y agoMany if not most companies outsource employment verification to The Work Number. When you get a new job, a frozen report will complicate your background check. They don't give out salary info in employment checks though. AFAIK they require your explicit permission except for government agencies who use it to verify your eligibility for benefits. I would be surprised if they are not selling aggregate salary data though
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoIf they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them not have this info before an offer is made.
- uriah 2y agoThat's normally how it goes. At least, I've always had the background check happen after an offer is signed. It's usually a separate company and they just report back whether your job titles/employment dates match your resume
- ghaff 2y agoI don't know how common it actually is. I've always provided references and probably OKd a background check but post-school my few jobs have always been through people I knew and there was really no reason to run a check except fr pro-forma reasons.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago22 states currently have salary history bans. You can save the trouble of jumping through Equifax's hoops if you have that protection.
- Nextgrid 2y ago> They politely told me to kick rocks The only way this stops is when people return the favor (on the spot, without a notice period).
- PROMISE_237 2y ago[dead]
- consultSKI 2y agoYep. Equifax got hacked a few years ago and the Government let them use ITS credit monitoring tool for those affected instead of reaching into its own pockets to pay for a third-party solution. #sad #speakingOfMonopolies
- slipperybeluga 2y ago[dead]
- Panini_Jones 2y agoAs a datapoint for how I've seen this used in the real world, I've spoken to startups who will defer to Pave regarding how much they'll offer to pay. The startup I spoke to said 'We pay you the 85th percentile for your YOE and role based on Pave data'.
- nsxwolf 2y agoThen I want 99th.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoConsidering the median tech startup employee is already above average, I think the 99th percentile, and above, really only belongs to literal, bonafide, geniuses…
- azemetre 2y agoIs this true? I look at jobs on well found and most startups pay worse salaries than what I was making at insurance companies. Not too mention the worse benefits that they appear to offer as well.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago*Tech startups in the SF Bay Area, who have employees physically located in the same.
- abhisharma2 2y agoIn case folks want to quickly know how to start a freeze, heres the info from the website: To communicate a freeze request, send an email to the address below requesting a Freeze Placement Form: TWNFreeze@equifax.com
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoPave is a company that has been snapping up other existing companies that performed this kind of aggregation of compensation data. Basically companies look at this benchmarking data to figure out what they should pay for different jobs and levels. Just some extent companies genuinely need this kind of data to figure out what to do. But I also think it breaks supply and demand. Companies are not discovering price of labor but just using each other’s signals to decide what to pay collectively https://www.pave.com/blog-posts/announcing-paves-series-c-and-acquisition-of-option-impact https://www.pave.com/blog-posts/announcing-paves-series-c-an...
- jnwatson 2y agoI froze the report, and I also told my employer not to report anything to Equifax (which luckily my employer allows). This made getting approved for a mortgage more difficult. These days, loan officers just expect to be able to hit a button and get all your info. We're losing the privacy battle.
- no_wizard 2y agoThese services feel not dissimilar to the Realpagr case that is ongoing now with rent price fixing. How does this ultimately not end up having a depressing impact on salaries?
- immibis 2y agoIt does depress salaries, which is the point.
- idbehold 2y agoThe freeze is mostly ineffective for when you actually want it to work. From what I remember (even for the credit freezes) is that if you provide written consent to, say, a background check, then that overrides your freeze. So if you're applying for a job (basically the major instance where you'd want your salary information private) they're going to ask for your consent to do a background check and bingo they'll know how much money you make. IMO this type of information should be illegal to sell or request.
- sgerenser 2y agoI’m not sure this is true. The last time I changed jobs I had my TWN report frozen, and the background check company was really confused and said “we can’t seem to verify your job history through our normal means” without specifically saying why. I had to send some redacted paystubs.
- idbehold 2y agoWith the passage of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act which was signed into law on May 24, 2018, security freezes do not apply to the making of a credit report for use in connection with "employment, tenant, or background screening purposes" (see Sec. 301(a)(4)(I) of the Act [page 34 of the PDF below]). https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ174/PLAW-115publ174.pdf https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ174/PLAW-115publ174.p... To be fair, I'm not sure if the same rules apply to whatever type of "freeze" the work number offers. I'm not even entirely sure it's regulated at all.
- atrettel 2y agoI agree that it is actually pretty confusing what kind of "freeze" The Work Number offers when you do it, especially since The Work Number does not distinguish between hard inquiries and soft inquiries and groups both together as "Verifiers who have procured or attempted to procure your data in the past 24 months". Most freezes only block hard inquiries, which involve the extension of new credit. Background checks typically come in as soft inquiries and therefore bypass security freezes. Oddly enough, there are some companies that extend credit even with soft inquiries, so a security freeze will not stop fraud there. That said, I have seen anecdotes online that say that when somebody pulls a frozen The Work Number report, it comes back as blank even if there is information in the file. This is different than how freezes are handled elsewhere. Most places just report back that the report is frozen when a frozen report is requested. They do not imply anything about the state of the information in it.
- briffle 2y agoI just signed up to see what they have on me. I love that they have ALL my personal info, but I can't create an account with a password longer than 16 characters.. Why the heck are they not storing the hash? Great security.
- 486sx33 2y ago“I’m an employee looking for my data”. Links to https://employees.theworknumber.com/ https://employees.theworknumber.com/ Spits out 403 error forbidden Gosh, that’s awful.
- arwhatever 2y agoIf one is required to sign an agreement to a background check, could this supersede one’s freezing of one’s Work Number?
- sgerenser 2y agoIn my experience the background check company (Hireright IIRC) was not able to complete the check “normally” with my TWN report frozen. Had to send redacted paystubs.
- pogue 2y agoThis thread got pretty off track. But, if I were to opt out of this database and went looking for a job, would potential employers not be able to see specific history about me (or at least not from Equifax)?