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Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

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Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#81

Post by scarmig »

JoBrad wrote: post #36
readams wrote: post #30

The FTC has a site with a lot of helpful information on helping you resolve identity theft, and even will help generate the correct documentation and direct you through the maze. https://www.identitytheft.gov Note the it is literally the business of credit agencies to blithely ruin lives so they will be very unhelpful if they can.

Huge differences in quality between your first and second paragraphs. It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. They prosper when more people are in the credit pool and are able to take out loans.

If credit agencies' business is just to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness, why is regulation of them necessary at all, since they'll always be consumer friendly?

Or maybe there's more to it than that?

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#82

Post by jaclaz »

forbiddenlake wrote: post #63
jaclaz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are more, but that's what $40 / month. Help me understand, US$ 40 in rewards agains a monthly spending of?

Assuming a good cash-back rate of 2%, $2000 spent on the credit card for $40 back. The point being he's spending the $2000 anyway, so he'd rather get $40 back from his credit card company rather than $0 back if he used cash or debit.

But cash-back is not the same as reward points.

Cash-back is "money", reward points (more or less) is "discount on given good".

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#83

Post by milkytron »

> Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department.

This is why I record every single one of my phone calls. I've recorded lies over the phone (without knowing they were lying at the time) and then played them back to another customer service rep to prove how I was deceived. I was immediately escalated as the author says and could feel how the evidence gave me power in the situation.

Edit: I'm not suggesting anyone break the law. If you're going to record phone calls, know your laws and get consent if necessary. This document which was last updated 3/10/2017 may be of help https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LAWS-ON-R...

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#84

Post by scarmig »

yebyen wrote: post #29
bga wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the information is hidden to prevent gaming the system. As someone mentioned in another thread, they took out a loan for $1000, sat on it and just paid it off. Credit score goes up with zero risk for just the cost of interest. If the algorithm were exposed, it would be easier to game.

If the things they were tracking are reliable indicators of "credit-worthiness" then it would not matter if you "game the system" or not. It's like that story about robbing the bank. First, we get jobs at the bank. Then we go in and work the jobs every day... (spoiler: we never actually rob the bank, because we get cushy jobs with benefits, and retirement plans. That's brilliant!) Anyone with a good credit score can…

Any metric is gameable. And, if the current algorithm is the best way to predict "credit-worthiness," publicizing its details will drive consumers toward different behavior, which makes it less powerful

Imagine Google made its own credit score, based on your searches, social contacts, etc. It turns out that someone clicking on ads for product X have a very high likelihood of repaying their debt. This information ends up publicly leaked.

What do people start doing? How does this affect the quality of Google's credit algorithm?

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#85

Post by patio11 »

yardie wrote: post #74
JoBrad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge differences in quality between your first and second paragraphs. It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. They prosper when more people are in the credit pool and are able to take out loans.

> It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. Please, the dogma they preach they might as well be a religion. * Where you live affects your credit worthiness. * How long you live there affects your credit worthiness. * The title of your job affects your credit worthiness. * Marital status affects your credit worthiness. * The degree and school you attended affects your credit…

Do you live in the United States? In the United States:

Where you live affects your credit worthiness.

Illegal, and radioactively so. The practice was called redlining and a bank engaging in it would have hellfire rained upon it.

Marital status affects your credit worthiness.

Also illegal.

The degree and school you attended affects your credit worthiness.

Untrue; credit reports don't include this information. (It is available from specialized vendors for doing things like e.g. verifying resumes, but banks don't habitually employ them because your credit history is much, much more reliable.)

The title of your job affects your credit worthiness.

Untrue; titles are generally not reported to CRAs, difficult to get out of customers, and difficult to verify. If you wanted to use them in underwriting, for the same amount of effort you can just ask "What is your salary?" and verify it with the employer the same way you'd verify their title; this gets you everything you want in a more reliable fashion, since salary inflation is less common than title inflation.

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#86

Post by leeoniya »

yardie wrote: post #74
JoBrad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge differences in quality between your first and second paragraphs. It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. They prosper when more people are in the credit pool and are able to take out loans.

> It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. Please, the dogma they preach they might as well be a religion. * Where you live affects your credit worthiness. * How long you live there affects your credit worthiness. * The title of your job affects your credit worthiness. * Marital status affects your credit worthiness. * The degree and school you attended affects your credit…

statistics done by machines on past datasets can reveal a great deal about a population, regardless of how discriminatory, unfair or "bullshit", it may seem to a human.

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#87

Post by patio11 »

milkytron wrote: post #83

> Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department. This is…

Important not-a-lawyer advice: recording phone calls without the other party's consent is illegal in wide swathes of the U.S., but keeping copies of letters is legal everywhere.

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#88

Post by sillysaurus3 »

tptacek wrote: post #80
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you mention that you sold Matasano, but that kind of sidesteps that you'd be screwed if it didn't happen. It's not tech workers vs retail clerks so much as financial windfall vs having a regular 9-5. The credit system just sucks. It's a historical accident. But it's also not really realistic to say "In some cases you can get away with not worrying about your credit score if you're a tech worker."

I'm not arguing that the credit system doesn't suck. It sucks so much that I haven't had any meaningful contact with it for 20 years. For most of that time, the overwhelming majority of which I spent financially insecure (and a parent, to boot), my disengagement from credit has ended up feeling like a blessing. I genuinely do not understand why people get credit cards. As for "windfall vs. 9-5", I spent ~20 years in…

It solves getting your kids through college. That's one of the other pain points. The quality of life difference is massive if you have to work full time and also go to college full time.

It would be delightful to find an answer to some of the problems of bad credit. But it kind of matters.

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#89

Post by JoBrad »

scarmig wrote: post #81
JoBrad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge differences in quality between your first and second paragraphs. It is the business of credit agencies to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness. They prosper when more people are in the credit pool and are able to take out loans.

If credit agencies' business is just to serve as proxies of your credit worthiness, why is regulation of them necessary at all, since they'll always be consumer friendly? Or maybe there's more to it than that?

That's a pretty weak argument. The existence of regulation - even heavy regulation - in an industry is not a barometer of their value to consumers.

But there are a lot of reasons why an industry who scores credit worthiness would be highly regulated, even if nothing had ever gone wrong (and plenty has). The main reason would be to ensure that score is applied in the same way to everyone, and that it isn't crafted in a way to create extreme disparities based on things like sex, race, religion, etc.

Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

#90

Post by HarryHirsch »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #51
quuquuquu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to credit suisse, only 33m people in this world have 1m+ USD of assets. So, out of 3.5 billion adults in this world, only 0.7% have the ability to buy a home in a large city in cash. What, then, should the other 99.3% of people do?

Improve your skills, increase income, invest and save, live with roommates, learn that consumerism is programmed into people through TV ads and thus is completely unnecessary. Mr. Money Mustache[1] has been blogging about this for years, and it's a great place to start for people who don't understand personal finance. Also check out the personal finance[2] and financial independence[3] subreddits. [1]: https://www.mr…

What can Money-Moustachism do about the fact that the well-paying jobs are increasingly concentrated in a few cities on either coast? Is the future that everyone becomes a down-at-heel rentier just like he is? Are we all supposed to be cheap John Arillagas living off the people who do actual, productive work?
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