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I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

nytimes.com

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Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#121

Post by maxerickson »

ineedasername wrote: post #110
CPLX wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a perceptible difference to a consumer who has been flagged as "fraud" when they are not, in fact, someone who has committed fraud? If not, then there's no difference.

They are literally two very different types of data. This isn't an ambiguous issue: One is a continuous variable, the other categorical. Whether or not one or the other could erroneously flag someone doesn't change that, and doesn't mean they're the same. Because the nature of those differences means the use cases are different. A continuous score has much wider versatility than a black & white binary value, and allo…

Categorization into groups that you will or will not do business with is scoring. Pedantically explaining what sort of scoring it is doesn't change that.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#122

Post by yborg »

yabadabadoes wrote: post #76
creaghpatr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you opt-in when you request a quote.

It still sounds sketchy since it sounds like your data is maintained at a 3rd party for a purpose that is not intended (unrelated to your care) on the idea that you may one day opt-in to the unintended use.

We are all most likely explicitly authorizing this activity in the reams of fine print you sign without reading or otherwise accept by agreeing to service by your local hospital group or pharmacy combine.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#124

Post by CPLX »

ineedasername wrote: post #110
CPLX wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a perceptible difference to a consumer who has been flagged as "fraud" when they are not, in fact, someone who has committed fraud? If not, then there's no difference.

They are literally two very different types of data. This isn't an ambiguous issue: One is a continuous variable, the other categorical. Whether or not one or the other could erroneously flag someone doesn't change that, and doesn't mean they're the same. Because the nature of those differences means the use cases are different. A continuous score has much wider versatility than a black & white binary value, and allo…

You were replying to a comment that said "a binary score is still a score"

The comment you appear to be arguing with, is completely true. A binary score is of course a score, and in fact that's almost always how credit and trust scores are actually perceived.

From the company's perspective many scores are continuous, but from the consumers perspective that's mostly a distinction without a difference.

Usually from the consumer side you're being told you got the job or didn't, or got the credit card, or loan, or apartment, or didn't.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#125

Post by astura »

CPLX wrote: post #12

I am surprised these guys are able to operate outside the normal credit reporting laws. He’s referencing things that happened in 2009, which is well outside the usual 7 year limit for credit report data. Clearly, these companies are going to make the argument that this is not credit report data subject to consumer credit laws, but I’m curious if that has been tested at all. I would think an enterprising lawyer could…

Seven years only applies only to certain delinquencies, not all information in general. Most "aged" reports will have information dating back well past seven years (loan origination dates, address history, former name(s) used, etc.).

Usually a closed account will stop being reported to credit bureaus 10 years after the last activity on that account. I don't know if that's due to law or custom. My own credit report contains accounts closed more than seven years ago but less than 10 years ago and it does NOT include the one account closed 13 years ago.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#126

Post by CPLX »

awinder wrote: post #94
maxerickson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. If companies are relying on the fraud estimates, it isn't going to be fun to be a false positive.

I mean people have been subjected to fraud scoring for decades, you get declined, you follow up, and you get in w/ a new data point for the next time.

They've been subject to fraud scoring across a large group of disparate companies for decades?

I would say that's absolutely not true at all. And to the extent that it is true, via credit reporting agencies, it's extremely aggressively regulated to allow consumers to see and challenge how that data is used, as well as to completely opt out of that system.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#127

Post by volkl48 »

GoToRO wrote: post #53
mattlondon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand it, if they are processing EU citizens' data then they are liable for GDPR regardless of where they run their business from. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-eu-general-data-pro...

Then I'm curious how do they enforce it. Maybe with US there are some treaties signed, but what about a foreign country that has no treaties with the EU?

To date, the answer to that question appears to be: Sternly worded letters, which will be promptly ignored.

There's no actual enforcement mechanisms against an entity that does not exist in the EU and has no financial exposure to it. That includes with the US, as far as I can tell.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#128

Post by sailfast »

Anyone know if:

1. This information was shared in accordance with the privacy policies and user agreements in place at the time the sharing started or were the policies retroactively updated?

2. Any company actually been prosecuted / sued successfully for violating their terms of use sharing data with third parties? Have any users actually received $$, or just regulators via fines?

This will be near impossible to answer of course unless you were actually involved in the sharing with Sift, but it seems to me the more this happens with all of our data, along with the total lack of enforcement of any lapses / breaches these kind of problems / proxy scores will only get worse and more difficult to reason about as a customer.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#129

Post by yowlingcat »

earthboundkid wrote: post #114
astura wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already a big (and largely unaddressed) problem with the big 3 credit CRAs, if you know enough about a person you can very easily request their credit report and get the keys to the kingdom (so-to-speak) - everything you didn't already know. I mean, I already request credit reports for my husband without issue, for example (with his permission! - he finds it much easier to just ask me to do those things for h…

CRAs are a scam from top to bottom. A bank makes a lot of money, but in theory, it's doing an important job which benefits society. That job is independently assessing creditworthiness. Of course, it's hard to assess creditworthiness if you don't know if someone is making a lot of loans at different places. So, there needs to be a system for credit monitoring . But credit monitoring is not credit rating . Credit rati…

Agreed. The whole idea of "identity theft" stinks of PR lubrication. Your identity cannot be stolen, but "identity theft" is a clever, cynical sleight of hand that obscures what really happened: credit fraud, specifically fraud that is the responsibility of the party issuing credit and the criminal propagating it.
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