I feel like this could be good for some people and very bad for others. Good luck getting a 50% increase with a new job when your salary history is available.
Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
471–480 of 805 posts
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#472NOTE: It is possible to freeze access to your employment data here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze That being said, it doesn't stop employers from continuing to hand Equifax your data on a gold platter, and therefore does nothing to protect you from the inevitable data breach that will result in Equifax being required to give everyone affected $0.36 or one year of free credit monitoring.
What are the consequences of doing this? What conclusion do HR departments draw about a person who freezes their employment information?
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#473Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check if an ad blocker might be interfering? I finished my CCPA request in ~2 minutes and it only required that I do SMS verification. Presumably because the name, phone, address, and email all matched records they had on file for me...
There’s a special caliber of crappy site that only functions when ad-blocking is enabled. My working theory is that the sites are so bad, they rely on the ads to provide their dependencies as global. Block the ads and you’ve blocked the ancient version jquery the main site needs loaded of function.
At least some adblockers work on keywords. I once made an api call called 'track' that got blocked as a tracker. It was for the pathway you were on after choosing something on that page. I had to rename it to get it to work properly.
It didn't matter that it was an api for that domain. It didn't matter that it had nothing to do with Google ads. It certainly wasn't on any list unless they were adding all newly registered domains to it.
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#475Are there equivalent services that broker data of citizens in other countries? As a non-American, my layperson understanding of American legislation is that it's extremely lax when it comes to protecting individuals from privacy invasions like this. Is anyone aware of laws in the EU/Canada/Australia that would prevent this kind of thing happening?
i've never seen this in Canada but even in the U.S., I don't think it's being misused the way that people are suggesting here.
I have referred thousands of callers to TheWorkNumber (and competitors like 'Thomas and Company') in my years working at a call centre and the reason is always the same: income verification for somebody who needs to get approved for a mortgage loan application or something else like that.
I don't actually see any suggestion that the salary data is being "sold" per se rather than just being used for legitimate income verification purposes
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#476Gf
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
The last part doesn't work in almost any company where you're not directly working with the owner. Middle managers can't approve any raise higher than say, 5%, and even that's after a full review cycle. It's a lot more likely to put a bullseye on your head as "money driven" or something considered negative (yes, the irony is jarring!).
Middle managers can't approve any raise higher than say, 5%, and even that's after a full review cycle. They can ask their boss to approve it though, and if necessary it could go all the way to the top.
Most people wouldn't stick their neck out unless it's really necessary and directly beneficial, especially since there are systems in place to prevent/block/slow down this kind of thing. Especially if you're a newcomer.
The positive case is the (very rare) exception.
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#478I wonder if most of the info is sent by the payroll / HR software employers use, rather than the employer themselves and without said employers knowledge? I.e. it’s a way for the payroll software companies to earn extra money rather than the original employer.
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#479I wrote software for a company that sold software to Texas hhsc, they use this to look for hidden assets when assessing benefits. This is the only system I know of that contains salary info. We integrated with their apis for a number of products and their data is a mess and often not very accurate. Also their api has a decent error rate. 5 years ago anyway, their api would break with any non unicode characters in a name. There were some foreign companies that we couldn't get data from for example.
Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale
#480NOTE: It is possible to freeze access to your employment data here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze That being said, it doesn't stop employers from continuing to hand Equifax your data on a gold platter, and therefore does nothing to protect you from the inevitable data breach that will result in Equifax being required to give everyone affected $0.36 or one year of free credit monitoring.
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…
And then they have all of that as well ready to be breached!