13 ms·

I 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 equi

I 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 ago
Don't ever work in the public sector then. Your salary is public record, open to anyone who is curious enough to look.
- hypeatei 2y ago
  I 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 ago
      Most companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
      - dcrazy 2y ago
        Such 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...
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        skyyler 2y ago
        And pot was illegal in the 70s.
        jgalt212 2y ago
        It still is.
        ghaff 2y ago
        At the US federal level. It may or may not be illegal at the state level--and is regulated in any case.
        jacobr1 2y ago
        It is still illegal in every US state. States can legalize it at the level of their own laws, and they can choose not to enforce federal laws, but that doesn't actually make it legal while federal laws are in place that conflict. A federal agent could choose to walk into any dispensary in a "legal" state and arrest everyone there, and they could be prosecuted in federal court. Yet at a practical level there has been a decision to defer to the states on what they will enforce, but that is a decision of executive authority rather than the law.
        ghaff 2y ago
        I expect you'd have a pretty complicated jurisdictional case if a team of FBI agents were to go into a dispensary in a state where it was legal and round everyone up. And pretty much no sane politician would go anywhere near it. I also wouldn't (hypothetically) travel with the stuff over state boundaries.
    - GTP 2y ago
      Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the information about how much I pay you, even from a devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we should share the property of that data somehow. I don't see how you could argue that that data would be solely the employer's data.
      - hunter2_ 2y ago
        If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not mine despite the fact that it consists of things that other people told me? I can't share it without the permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise not to?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        willcipriano 2y ago
        Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that way don't get invited out anywhere.
        GTP 2y ago
        It really depends on which kind of data you're collecting. If you're collecting health related data that is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would prevent you from sharing that data with third parties without one of the admissible legal basis, the most common of which is the consent of the people whose data you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA laws would prevent you from sharing it. Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being that health, together with a few other categories, has special protections.
        BobbyJo 2y ago
        These are answered questions. If you are talking about the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree that their answers become your property (either implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both), or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.
    - abeppu 2y ago
      ... should companies be nervous about this also though? Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is this effectively leaking potentially strategically important info? Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than your current employer"? Could market analysts use this data to notice when a company starts firing more people, or starts giving fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along with a caveat "however given decreased investment in staff, their pace of product development or quality of client services may be at risk."
    - samus 2y ago
      The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly. Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-influenced way of seeing this issue.
    - mapt 2y ago
      In a market-first values system, where we rely on the labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us, colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-earth retribution from the FTC. Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and distributing it to your workers" type shit.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        > given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us I find it amusing/annoying how many Free™-market boosterism messages are actually contradictory "heads I win, tails you lose" constructs. For example: 1. "Regulations are bad, because left to its own devices the market will be optimally-efficient, once everyone has perfect-information about all the prices and deals other people are making." 2. "Regulations are bad, because cartels and collusion will be destroyed by defectors who use their freedom to make secret prices and hidden deals." Sometimes these arguments come from the same people, but even when they don't they represent two wildly incompatible ideas of what "the free market" really is.
        throw10920 2y ago
        I wonder what the name is for the fallacies committed by this comment and grandparent comment. It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed these two contradictory things, I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them". It's like a strawman fallacy did a fusion dance with an ad-hominem. I see it all the time on HN - surely it has a name.
        Terr_ 2y ago
        > It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed [...]" No, what's disingenuous is your weird attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion which has made you uncomfortable. You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it. That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy. That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts to something that at least involves the original topic of markets and market-actors, starting with: > I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them" Your comment is saying--via sarcastic subtext--that I have "made up" items #1 and #2 and that (to substitute GP's term) "free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk. Is that really what you believe and you'd be convinced otherwise by examples, or would you like to issue some non-sarcastic clarification?
    - karaterobot 2y ago
      Does my personal health information belong to my doctor? Not according to HIPAA, at least not in a way that gives the doctor control over selling it. While my pay is currently not protected by similar regulation, it seems like the kind of protection regulation similar to HIPAA could defensibly target.
      - xenocratus 2y ago
        Your personal health information is information that pertains to you and you only. Your compensation is part of a contract between yourself and your employer, hence why both parties have to sign it, and why both parties have ownership over it. Not arguing that payroll information can't be protected, my only point was that your comparison was off.
        treypitt 2y ago
        Because hospitals and clinics don't care or record the treatment they provide?
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Not to mention insurance.
        karaterobot 2y ago
        I'm not saying it is currently the case that I own my compensation number, I'm saying it's not impossible to imagine creating regulation to make that happen.
  - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
    Yeah I used to work for the navy. Pay was standardized under the GS pay schedule and anybody could have looked that up. I was fine with that. In the private sector, your comp is determined by a negotiation undermined by an asymmetric information disparity. HR at a hiring company has way more information around market comp as it is without having your exact current comp when they make an offer. What I find particularly egregious about this is that management at this company had admonished me that my comp was 'confidential' and that I shouldn't discuss it, while simultaneously selling it to equifax.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Some jobs fall under this "public sector" transparency but work much more like a private employer when it comes to salary negotiation. For example a state university recruits staff and negotiates compensation much like a private employer (no equity options of course) but your salary will be public if you are hired.
    - samus 2y ago
      There are countries (Sweden IIRC) where the salary record is public, probably to eliminate this information asymmetry.
      - worstspotgain 2y ago
        Finland has National Jealousy Day: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-published-everyone-s-taxes-on-national-jealousy-day/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-publ...
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Why would that be a widely understood part of the job description? Almost every American teacher, firefighter, planner, street engineer, health inspector, police officer, train conductor, bus driver, along with the managers, office administrative staff, janitors, and groundskeepers that support those activities are public sector employees. What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do? Most of these jobs are not special or meaningfully "public". They're just normal jobs for firms that happen to be public bodies. I don't think it's at all obvious that people are knowingly and deliberately making these tradeoffs by working there.
    - Barrin92 2y ago
      >What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do? That they receive their salary from the tax payer, the public is their employer, and it'd be pretty odd if your employer didn't know what they paid you. They're executive organs of the state, police and firefighters, unlike private workers, also don't get to choose what laws they enforce or what fires they put out. If you're a civil servant you obviously forego most of the rights of private sector workers in exchange for usually lifetime employment and set pay rates.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        I don't think it's odd that we get to know what bus drivers get paid, but I don't think there's any special grand bargain to these jobs that make the privacy implications less significant. If we get to know what the janitor at my village hall makes, I have a lot less of a problem with Equifax knowing how much more Python developers make.
    - qwytw 2y ago
      Usually they all get paid more or less the same since compensation is directly tied to the job title/rank and other public criteria. This information (in aggregate) shouldn't ever be non-public (under any circumstances) due to obvious reason. So even if your specific salary/wage is not published anyone who knows what's your specific title/job would be able to estimate it somewhat accurately.
- admissionsguy 2y ago
  or live in Sweden (where your earnings as well as your address and property, car or pet ownership are public record)
  - f1shy 2y ago
    I’ve read about that. Is ipen to ANYbody? Is there a link? Thanks
    - Wytwwww 2y ago
      IIRC in Norway at least everyone (who lives there) can check it but your name will be recorded and visible to that person.
    - admissionsguy 2y ago
      Multiple 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    In the US, most municipalities will publish each employee's compensation every year. You can literally look them up by name.
    - zdp7 2y ago
      I 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 ago
        Here 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 ago
      That is exactly what they are saying. The public records typically contain annual compensation, not the detailed breakdown available via Work Number.
- gperkins978 2y ago
  Public 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        There'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 ago
  Which 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 ago
  The 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 ago
I 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 ago
  You 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 ago
      The 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 ago
      This is the view from a bubble I am not familiar with, and really don't care about.
uriah 2y ago
Many 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 ago
  If they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them not have this info before an offer is made.
  - uriah 2y ago
    That'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 ago
      I 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 ago
22 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 ago
Yep. 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]

SoftTalker 2y ago

Don't ever work in the public sector then. Your salary is public record, open to anyone who is curious enough to look.

hypeatei 2y ago
I 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 ago
    Most companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
    - dcrazy 2y ago
      Such 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...
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - skyyler 2y ago
        And pot was illegal in the 70s.
        jgalt212 2y ago
        It still is.
        ghaff 2y ago
        At the US federal level. It may or may not be illegal at the state level--and is regulated in any case.
        jacobr1 2y ago
        It is still illegal in every US state. States can legalize it at the level of their own laws, and they can choose not to enforce federal laws, but that doesn't actually make it legal while federal laws are in place that conflict. A federal agent could choose to walk into any dispensary in a "legal" state and arrest everyone there, and they could be prosecuted in federal court. Yet at a practical level there has been a decision to defer to the states on what they will enforce, but that is a decision of executive authority rather than the law.
        ghaff 2y ago
        I expect you'd have a pretty complicated jurisdictional case if a team of FBI agents were to go into a dispensary in a state where it was legal and round everyone up. And pretty much no sane politician would go anywhere near it. I also wouldn't (hypothetically) travel with the stuff over state boundaries.
  - GTP 2y ago
    Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the information about how much I pay you, even from a devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we should share the property of that data somehow. I don't see how you could argue that that data would be solely the employer's data.
    - hunter2_ 2y ago
      If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not mine despite the fact that it consists of things that other people told me? I can't share it without the permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise not to?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that way don't get invited out anywhere.
      - GTP 2y ago
        It really depends on which kind of data you're collecting. If you're collecting health related data that is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would prevent you from sharing that data with third parties without one of the admissible legal basis, the most common of which is the consent of the people whose data you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA laws would prevent you from sharing it. Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being that health, together with a few other categories, has special protections.
      - BobbyJo 2y ago
        These are answered questions. If you are talking about the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree that their answers become your property (either implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both), or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.
  - abeppu 2y ago
    ... should companies be nervous about this also though? Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is this effectively leaking potentially strategically important info? Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than your current employer"? Could market analysts use this data to notice when a company starts firing more people, or starts giving fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along with a caveat "however given decreased investment in staff, their pace of product development or quality of client services may be at risk."
  - samus 2y ago
    The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly. Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-influenced way of seeing this issue.
  - mapt 2y ago
    In a market-first values system, where we rely on the labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us, colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-earth retribution from the FTC. Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and distributing it to your workers" type shit.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us I find it amusing/annoying how many Free™-market boosterism messages are actually contradictory "heads I win, tails you lose" constructs. For example: 1. "Regulations are bad, because left to its own devices the market will be optimally-efficient, once everyone has perfect-information about all the prices and deals other people are making." 2. "Regulations are bad, because cartels and collusion will be destroyed by defectors who use their freedom to make secret prices and hidden deals." Sometimes these arguments come from the same people, but even when they don't they represent two wildly incompatible ideas of what "the free market" really is.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        I wonder what the name is for the fallacies committed by this comment and grandparent comment. It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed these two contradictory things, I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them". It's like a strawman fallacy did a fusion dance with an ad-hominem. I see it all the time on HN - surely it has a name.
        Terr_ 2y ago
        > It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed [...]" No, what's disingenuous is your weird attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion which has made you uncomfortable. You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it. That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy. That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts to something that at least involves the original topic of markets and market-actors, starting with: > I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them" Your comment is saying--via sarcastic subtext--that I have "made up" items #1 and #2 and that (to substitute GP's term) "free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk. Is that really what you believe and you'd be convinced otherwise by examples, or would you like to issue some non-sarcastic clarification?
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    Does my personal health information belong to my doctor? Not according to HIPAA, at least not in a way that gives the doctor control over selling it. While my pay is currently not protected by similar regulation, it seems like the kind of protection regulation similar to HIPAA could defensibly target.
    - xenocratus 2y ago
      Your personal health information is information that pertains to you and you only. Your compensation is part of a contract between yourself and your employer, hence why both parties have to sign it, and why both parties have ownership over it. Not arguing that payroll information can't be protected, my only point was that your comparison was off.
      - treypitt 2y ago
        Because hospitals and clinics don't care or record the treatment they provide?
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Not to mention insurance.
      - karaterobot 2y ago
        I'm not saying it is currently the case that I own my compensation number, I'm saying it's not impossible to imagine creating regulation to make that happen.
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago
  Yeah I used to work for the navy. Pay was standardized under the GS pay schedule and anybody could have looked that up. I was fine with that. In the private sector, your comp is determined by a negotiation undermined by an asymmetric information disparity. HR at a hiring company has way more information around market comp as it is without having your exact current comp when they make an offer. What I find particularly egregious about this is that management at this company had admonished me that my comp was 'confidential' and that I shouldn't discuss it, while simultaneously selling it to equifax.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Some jobs fall under this "public sector" transparency but work much more like a private employer when it comes to salary negotiation. For example a state university recruits staff and negotiates compensation much like a private employer (no equity options of course) but your salary will be public if you are hired.
  - samus 2y ago
    There are countries (Sweden IIRC) where the salary record is public, probably to eliminate this information asymmetry.
    - worstspotgain 2y ago
      Finland has National Jealousy Day: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-published-everyone-s-taxes-on-national-jealousy-day/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-publ...
- tptacek 2y ago
  Why would that be a widely understood part of the job description? Almost every American teacher, firefighter, planner, street engineer, health inspector, police officer, train conductor, bus driver, along with the managers, office administrative staff, janitors, and groundskeepers that support those activities are public sector employees. What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do? Most of these jobs are not special or meaningfully "public". They're just normal jobs for firms that happen to be public bodies. I don't think it's at all obvious that people are knowingly and deliberately making these tradeoffs by working there.
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    >What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do? That they receive their salary from the tax payer, the public is their employer, and it'd be pretty odd if your employer didn't know what they paid you. They're executive organs of the state, police and firefighters, unlike private workers, also don't get to choose what laws they enforce or what fires they put out. If you're a civil servant you obviously forego most of the rights of private sector workers in exchange for usually lifetime employment and set pay rates.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I don't think it's odd that we get to know what bus drivers get paid, but I don't think there's any special grand bargain to these jobs that make the privacy implications less significant. If we get to know what the janitor at my village hall makes, I have a lot less of a problem with Equifax knowing how much more Python developers make.
  - qwytw 2y ago
    Usually they all get paid more or less the same since compensation is directly tied to the job title/rank and other public criteria. This information (in aggregate) shouldn't ever be non-public (under any circumstances) due to obvious reason. So even if your specific salary/wage is not published anyone who knows what's your specific title/job would be able to estimate it somewhat accurately.
admissionsguy 2y ago
or live in Sweden (where your earnings as well as your address and property, car or pet ownership are public record)
- f1shy 2y ago
  I’ve read about that. Is ipen to ANYbody? Is there a link? Thanks
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    IIRC in Norway at least everyone (who lives there) can check it but your name will be recorded and visible to that person.
  - admissionsguy 2y ago
    Multiple 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 ago
The 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 ago
  In the US, most municipalities will publish each employee's compensation every year. You can literally look them up by name.
  - zdp7 2y ago
    I 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 ago
      Here 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 ago
    That is exactly what they are saying. The public records typically contain annual compensation, not the detailed breakdown available via Work Number.
gperkins978 2y ago
Public 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      There'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 ago
Which 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 ago
The 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 ago

I 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 ago
You 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 ago
    The 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 ago
    This is the view from a bubble I am not familiar with, and really don't care about.

uriah 2y ago

Many 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 ago
If they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them not have this info before an offer is made.
- uriah 2y ago
  That'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 ago
    I 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 ago

22 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 ago

Yep. 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]