Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 341 posts

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#141

Post by astura »

CPLX wrote: post #62
lftl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the credit reporting laws pretty strictly scoped to making decisions about loans? I imagine these companies are pretty explicit with their clients that scores can't be used for those purposes.

They’re definitely used for rental applications and tenant evaluations, which seems like a very short hop to Airbnb.

They are also used as a factor in determining car and homeowners insurance premiums in most states. (People who pay their bills on time are less likely to make insurance claims)

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#142

Post by techslave »

philpem wrote: post #63
Cieplak wrote: post #26

I’m curious what sort of due diligence these companies must do to authenticate you as a person prior to satisfying an information retrieval request. Given that the exchange is entirely digital, it seems plausible that there are bad actors who would pose as someone else to gain access to their personal information. What sort of liability does one of these data controllers bear when they fail to properly authenticate a…

I've sent a couple of GDPR Subject Access Requests out of sheer curiosity. The answer is - in my experience - 'it varies'. One requested a copy of a photo ID or passport and were happy to accept a partly redacted copy with 'FOR PROOF OF ID ONLY - (company), (date)' over-typed on the scan in red. Another requested I email them from an email address they had in their records, or log in to change it and resubmit the req…

> I can only assume their refusal was because there were comments in the internal notes (on my or other tickets) they weren't comfortable disclosing.

more likely just following an established policy that applies to all such information, to take personal judgement out of the equation. almost certainly absolutely nothing to do with your “file” in particular.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#143

Post by diafygi »

Frost1x wrote: post #96
Cieplak wrote: post #26

I’m curious what sort of due diligence these companies must do to authenticate you as a person prior to satisfying an information retrieval request. Given that the exchange is entirely digital, it seems plausible that there are bad actors who would pose as someone else to gain access to their personal information. What sort of liability does one of these data controllers bear when they fail to properly authenticate a…

I suspect we as a society need new legislation to deal with these sort of issues. Before, much of this was incredibly difficult to impossible so legislation and regulation was entirely avoidable and relatively rare occurence could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. At this point, technology has enabled this sort of behavior at mass scale, now revealing far more personal and useful information about individuals. A…

So I originally studied chemical engineering, and one of the common catchphrases is, "regulations are written in blood." The reason there's a requirement to put a pressure relief valve on that tank is because at some point a tank like it didn't have one and it blew up and killed people. However, safety in chemical engineering has been evolving over centuries as we have understood more about the dangers and consequences of dealing with chemical manufacturing.

For software, it feels like we're only at the beginning of understanding the dangers and consequences of the software, business models, and technology our industry has created. Unfortunately, if it follows the same path as other engineering disciplines, we likely will experience decades or centuries of bloodshed before it is regulated appropriately.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#144

Post by lisper »

briandear wrote: post #133
earthboundkid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We might as well just dissolve the banks and move to a centralized planned economy if that's what we're doing, so that at least the centralized rating agencies will be democratically controlled. In the history of central planned economies, never have they been “democratically controlled.” Despite the name, places like the Democratic Peoples Republic of Where-ever are never democratic nor are they republics. > becau…

It's actually true. If you don't believe me, go try to start a bank. Here's a handy link to get you started:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#145

Post by brianpgordon »

> When I told Mr. Tan that I was alarmed to see my Airbnb messages and Yelp orders in the hands of a company I’d never heard of before, he responded by saying that Sift doesn’t sell or share any of the data it has with third parties.

What a line to say with a straight face. They are the third party that he's uncomfortable sharing his data with!

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#146

Post by SamBam »

astura wrote: post #82
zzzeek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does that not violate HIPAA ? I see it talking about "you can proactively opt out with hipaa" but everything I've ever seen about HIPAA is that all "opting in" needs to be explicitly granted by the patient.

If you want life insurance then you are required to give permission to view this data about you. If you don't want to give permission, then you don't get life insurance. https://www.rxhistories.com/irix/medical-data/ >How It Works >1 Applicants sign a HIPAA-compliant authorization, enabling insurers to retrieve their medical information >2 Insurers electronically query Milliman IntelliScript in real-time >3 Milliman…

But I never gave Milliman permission to hold this data, so didn't they already violate HIPAA?

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#147

Post by lisper »

astura wrote: post #89
Cieplak wrote: post #26

I’m curious what sort of due diligence these companies must do to authenticate you as a person prior to satisfying an information retrieval request. Given that the exchange is entirely digital, it seems plausible that there are bad actors who would pose as someone else to gain access to their personal information. What sort of liability does one of these data controllers bear when they fail to properly authenticate a…

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…

This problem is much bigger than just the CRAs. The fundamental problem is that the information that is used to authorize transactions (including financial transactions) is not bound to the transactions. It's re-usable. That makes phishing trivial and hence inevitable.

The situation has gotten slightly better recently because of the widespread deployment of chip cards, but these only protect POS transactions. They don't help with e-commerce or non-financial transactions like credit report requests.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#148

Post by bsanr2 »

As with many of these sorts of profiling mechanisms, I assume that racial bias is baked into the process, yes? You know, like it is with credit, crime sentencing, airport security checks, college admissions, and presumably retail and residential investment decision-making. I can't wait to find out exactly how this has been hurting people of color/poor white people.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#149

Post by cameron_b »

lisper wrote: post #144
briandear wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We might as well just dissolve the banks and move to a centralized planned economy if that's what we're doing, so that at least the centralized rating agencies will be democratically controlled. In the history of central planned economies, never have they been “democratically controlled.” Despite the name, places like the Democratic Peoples Republic of Where-ever are never democratic nor are they republics. > becau…

It's actually true. If you don't believe me, go try to start a bank. Here's a handy link to get you started: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm

How does your link support your assertion of corruption?

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#150

Post by lisper »

cameron_b wrote: post #149
lisper wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually true. If you don't believe me, go try to start a bank. Here's a handy link to get you started: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm

How does your link support your assertion of corruption?

The link doesn't. The experience you will have if you actually go try to start a bank will. I only provided the link to point you to the entrance of the rabbit hole.
Post reply on HN