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Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#51

Post by foobarian »

joegosse wrote: post #40
jdenning wrote: post #13

Is it legal for employers to provide salary data on particular employees without permission?

Under FCRA, your employer or potential employer must get permission from you before performing any credit report (which includes a salary report). >You must give your consent for reports to be provided to employers. A consumer reporting agency may not give out information about you to your employer, or a potential employer, without your written consent given to the employer. Written consent generally is not required…

Page 13-14 of the 20 page employment contract you skimmed.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#52

Post by Danihan »

smnrchrds wrote: post #44
joering2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever logged into Credit Karma? I wholehearty recommend it just to see how much information they are pulling, fully automatic up to seven days ago. Its not only my salary month by month, but also all my bank accounts, all credit card account all with amount I owe, amounts and history I paid, everything! Full front-face info, straight from credit reporting bureaus! :|

Credit Karma only shows credit accounts (credit cards, phone and internet bills,etc.) It does not include bank accounts (savings or chequing) nor salary information. But I am in Canada, maybe things are different in the States.

They aren't, the post you're replying to is inaccurate.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#53

Post by downer72 »

kevmo wrote: post #22
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #6

> The service is designed to provide automated employment and income verification for prospective employers, and tens of thousands of companies report employee salary data to it. It sounds like companies can easily use this to collude against employee wages and benefits.

Yeah, that is pretty crazy. The ball is usually already firmly in the employer's court. This kind of information greatly diminishes the already most-diminished's bargaining power.

And how does this further complicate the gender inequality issues, in terms of salary negotiations?

A common tactic is, if a company knows what you're making, they'll try to hold your earnings as close as possible to something only slightly better than any potential raise you'd be entitled to at your current employer, and you'll get the same tactic from multiple potential employers.

If you're only entitled to a 3% raise, organizations with access to this information might only ever offer 5%, and refuse to go higher.

With this information in the picture, lower salaries mysteriously stay low, even for some lateral moves, depending on who you are and what they can dig up on you.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#54

Post by gregcrv »

CommentCard wrote: post #25
nsxwolf wrote: post #19

I didn't know this existed at all. I thought they just made phone calls to your previous employer and asked. Are we allowed to see what's in it? I mean normally, not just when there's a data breach (and it looks like they shut it all down right now). Because when you get asked this on an interview, what's the "right" answer? There's base pay, bonuses, 401k match, all kinds of stuff. So the "right" answer is up in the…

This makes an already asymmetrical negotiation even tougher. There are two other credit bureaus that ostensibly do the same exact thing, so even though Equihax has shut this down for now, it doesn't mean that it isn't still occurring. All we need now is a 23AndMe breach, and we'll be fast-tracked to the GATTACA timeline!

No need for a 23AndMe breach. They can just collect your fallen hair after your interview ;)

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#55

Post by CommentCard »

huebnerob wrote: post #36
CommentCard wrote: post #20

It's offensive that I have to go jump through hoops, set security questions and a secret pin just so I can secure my own salary information. Is it too much to dream that Equifax should be legally obligated to provide, at the bare minimum, a way to easily secure this sensitive information? If I were a hiring manager or in HR this would be a goldmine for verifying candidates' salaries and work histories, and gaining th…

1. I've only ever given my SSN to a company in the same packet of information that contained my signed offer letter, so we'd be far past negotiations at that point. If you're worried about them going back and verifying what you said you made, well, you shouldn't be lying about that anyway. 2. I'd hope that people might hesitate a little bit before committing acts of identity fraud on an institutional scale.

1 - It depends on the company. I've had some companies ask for my SSN when visiting for an on-site interview, and others that don't ask for it until I've signed an offer.

2 - Will it save the company more money than the potential cost of lawsuits? Is it provably fraud? I'd argue that there is value in knowing for certain that an applicant made $x amount of total compensation in salary, benefits and equity. Having a precise dollar amount could let you implement all sorts of ways to optimize the compensation packages you offer for different employees.

For instance you could check an applicants past three jobs and get the average compensation % increase between each. You could use this to get a well-modeled idea of the minimum you need to offer them based on past trends in order to hire them.

Is this illegal? It should be, but the job market didn't anticipate the Equifax breach. There may not be laws that specifically prohibit this.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#57

Post by justifier »

Retric wrote: post #48
kevmo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is pretty crazy. The ball is usually already firmly in the employer's court. This kind of information greatly diminishes the already most-diminished's bargaining power.

Past pay is not directly a significant issue. It's just a question of getting competing offers. The real issue is some people suck at negotiation and past salaries will tell companies that.

If some people 'suck' at negotiating then that must mean there are others who are 'better' at negotiating

If I have a guardian who pays my rent so that i can take 6months to high ball offers to finally find a job that will pay me a high wage does that mean I'm 'better' at negotiating?

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#58

Post by takeda »

tyingq wrote: post #45
plandis wrote: post #21

> As part of our ongoing commitment to performance, reliability and security, Equifax Workforce Solutions will be servicing The Work Number starting Sunday, October 8, 2017. This will result in temporary service interruptions; if you have received this notice please call our service center at 866-222-5880 to complete your transaction. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Convenient that Equifax is doing…

There's an alternate set here, still up and running. https://secure.w2.talx.com/popups/findemployer.aspx https://secure.w2.talx.com/PreAuthenticated/employerEntry.as...

If I can't find my employer, does it mean I'm not affected?

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#59

Post by brianwawok »

justifier wrote: post #57
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past pay is not directly a significant issue. It's just a question of getting competing offers. The real issue is some people suck at negotiation and past salaries will tell companies that.

If some people 'suck' at negotiating then that must mean there are others who are 'better' at negotiating If I have a guardian who pays my rent so that i can take 6months to high ball offers to finally find a job that will pay me a high wage does that mean I'm 'better' at negotiating?

What stops you from taking the first job you find, and then spending 6 months while working looking for better jobs?

It hardly is THAT hard to get some competing offers. And if you can't be bothered, I guess you don't really want it anyway?

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#60

Post by anonintons »

foobarian wrote: post #51
joegosse wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under FCRA, your employer or potential employer must get permission from you before performing any credit report (which includes a salary report). >You must give your consent for reports to be provided to employers. A consumer reporting agency may not give out information about you to your employer, or a potential employer, without your written consent given to the employer. Written consent generally is not required…

Page 13-14 of the 20 page employment contract you skimmed.

And if you don't agree, you don't get hired.
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