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Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

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Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#461

Post by ryan_j_naughton »

staunch wrote: post #115
varenc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow placing a freeze requires filling out a PDF form, attaching a scan of your ID, and then sending it in over email, mail, or fax. The PDF lacks built in form fields you can type in. The extra friction is probably a feature: https://assets.equifax.com/wfs/theworknumber/assets/twn_Empl... (the exif data on that PDF shows the name of the employee that created it and that they used Word 2010...) The Equifax CCPA reques…

When I submit the myprivacy.equifax.com validation it hangs at "Processing..." indefinitely. #AbolishCreditAgencies

The current oligopoly of the big three credit bureaus is a travesty and needs substantial reform.

That being said, abolishing the concept of a consumer credit report entirely is a terrible idea. It is a fact that different people simply present different risks to a lender in their likelihood of default. Having actual data about a person's previous repayment history is extremely predictive of their future default probability (with proper ML applied).

If you remove the ability to use data about that actual person's previous behavior then instead lenders will simply not provide credit or financial services to large proportions of the population whom might be credit worthy as they would be unable to determine if they are creditworthy.

Again, I'm not arguing for the status quo. A lot of reform is needed. But to ignore the reality of how credit underwriting works is foolish. One of the reasons that many developing countries don't have financial services for their populations to access debt is because they don't have sufficient data to do credit underwriting.

And debt is a critical tool to enable investment in the present. Used wisely, debt enables a person to borrow from the future to invest in the present, e.g. buying a car so they can commute to a nearby city and earn a higher salary.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#462

Post by astura »

ouEight12 wrote: post #226
MichaelBurge wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you verify with tax returns, it would be easy to borrow money from a friend and count it as income every year just for loan qualification. And then borrow more money from a bank, wait 6 months for seasoning, and use it as down payment to buy real estate. And if the loan gets sold to the government, it needs to meet government underwriting criteria and the lender has no free will. Especially for residential mortgag…

> If you verify with tax returns, it would be easy to borrow money from a friend and count it as income every year just for loan qualification. 1) Where do I make friends with people who have such large piles of cash laying around they're willing to front me stacks large enough so I can lie and claim it as income on my taxes to inflate the size of the loan I can get? Multiple years in a row? 2) Once I claim it as inc…

"Friends" might be a misnomer, these are usually fraud rings/criminal organizations.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#463

Post by adwww »

staunch wrote: post #105
hypothesis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they pulled salary info after making an offer, then this is likely qualified as verification of data that prospective employee submitted. They can probably revoke that offer if one provided misleading info during application.

That's some shady behavior though. The whole point of the law is to prevent companies from penalizing employees based on prior salaries. Wouldn't be surprising if Google was finding excuses to retract offers based on seeing that they "overbid" on someone's comp. If anyone has had suspicious stuff like this happen, it sounds like it'd make a great lawsuit. Would be nice if some journalist(s) made a big stink out of Go…

I'm currently interviewing for a new role, and I've already been told my expected salary is too low for me to be a senior engineer. Hardly my fault I didn't know to ask for a higher amount?!

Will obviously be challenging this if I get an offer...

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#464

Post by thendrill »

Pixeleen wrote: post #352
wuschel wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what happens if you use a free credit card e.g Barclays? Does living in the EU zone protect you? Do they have access to your bank account information?

I'm not familiar with the Barclay card. MasterCard has a service called True Name that lets you put whatever you want on your card. It's proprietary but I don't know if they keep it between the two of you. European countries have much stronger privacy protections, though they might have social security numbers which contain sex as an even/odd digit, and it's difficult to change. Checking account numbers are listed in…

In Norway tax return and salary is a public information available to everyone, handled by the government.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#465

Post by astura »

xfz wrote: post #394
kube-system wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card companies do ask for permission to pull financial information from brokers when you sign up.

What if you say no? It's not really consent if declining affects your chances of getting credit or, worse, employment.

You simply don't get approved for a credit card if you say no. They won't even accept your application without permission to pull your data.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#466

Post by bilalq »

kennethh wrote: post #398
niemenmaa wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to read about the Norway's system! I would guess that "If you search for anyone, they can see that you did" is pretty fair but can hinder one's curiosity for searching the information. Also interesting that public lists for media is no longer distributed. How have media outlets taken this? Here in Finland Tax office publishes lists of all over 100k earners to media and they are published as public lists o…

In Norway if someone looks up your income you can see who did it since they need to login with an approved ID system linked to your social security number. So i practice most people do not look up other people they know.

That sounds like something that can easily be masked by going through a middleman.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#467

Post by astura »

what_ever wrote: post #173
hansvm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google asks for SSN for background checks and whatnot.

I guess. I always thought b/g checks are done via third party but I don't recall being asked for SSN during that step. It's been a while so I guess I am not remembering right. Thanks.

You're definitely asked for a social security number for a background check because it allows for more accurate data. You want to pull the background for the correct person, after all.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#468

Post by Arkanosis »

pjmlp wrote: post #264
snambi wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all employees share their salary information with each other, it becomes a headache for the employer. Each employee may quote the other person's salary demanding a raise. This is the reason behind the "keep your data confidential" idea.

In countries where unions exist for everyone on the building, everyone knows what everyone else is earning. Additionally, in most European countries we don't have a culture of hidding our salaries from each other.

That's definitely not true in France.

Unions and CSEs try to give some transparency on salaries for a given position in a given company, but even then, it's not like knowing the salary of everyone.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#470

Post by astura »

spiznnx wrote: post #281
bradlys wrote: post #55

Can confirm it is 100% correct. Employed in Washington and California. All numbers were correct for the ones I cared about - more or less. They missed three jobs and the dates were fucked up for a few - but is pretty upsetting. Definitely should be illegal. They even had pay period dates and everything for my current job. Including dates I was doing 401k. Like - what the fuck - why is my employer selling that informa…

I now better understand how Credit Karma can offer a free product.

Credit Karma's business model isn't somehow secret, they are very much upfront about it - https://support.creditkarma.com/s/article/Is-Credit-Karma-re...

They display ads for credit cards and other financial products on their site. They use your personal information to target specific financial products to you. Your credit karma ads are personalized.

I just wish I got better credit card offers from them; I haven't found any product they've advertised to be particularly enticing.

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