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Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

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531–540 of 805 posts

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#531
When I looked mine up I could see just about every job I’ve ever had. It also showed who pulled this report over the past 24 months. I see that my credit card companies pulled it, a background check company that my current job used, and also some random “TEST Batch Account” whatever that is.

SSN + DOB and you can find out how much money I made on my w2 for many years of my life. Nice.

I am debating on doing a ccpa delete on this data. I wonder if future employers will give me a hard time when negotiating pay if they can’t verify my salary this way? Also, will I have to delete it every time that an employer sends them this data? Awesome.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#532
post #529

I find the EU approach so much better. Your personal data (which means anything that can be used to uniquely identify you as a person) is your property, and the default is "no permission to use".

Yeah. Information should be a massive liability. The more they know, the more it should cost them. These companies should be scrambling to forget everything about us before we're even out the door, not amassing information into huge dossiers to sell to the highest bidder. The unapologetic audacity of these people never fails to impress me.

GDPR has a major problem though. It allows use of data for "legitimate" purposes. Of course, all of these businesses think of themselves and everything they're doing as perfectly legitimate. I wouldn't be surprised if some lobbyist worked that loophole in.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#533

If people are upset their employers are selling this information to Equifax, you know it would be a fantastic thing that an organized bargaining unit of all your fellow coworkers could demand your employer cease. Might be time to start talking to coworkers about this and many other things that upset you about your employer.

Or perhaps since your "private" salary data seems to be getting shared with anyone, why not just embrace it? Start sharing it with all your colleagues?

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#534
post #526

Quoted post unavailable.

I am neither American nor Chinese, nor live in either country. Their governments both do awful things around the world as well as domestically, but here’s one reason I’d rather live in the former: you can publicly criticize the government, and organise an opposition to it.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#536
post #529

I find the EU approach so much better. Your personal data (which means anything that can be used to uniquely identify you as a person) is your property, and the default is "no permission to use".

That's a view through rose-colored glasses, GDPR isn't that powerful (and it only applies to user-supplied data, not all personal data). As a relevant example, in Sweden your taxable income is public information.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#538
post #526

Quoted post unavailable.

I am neither American nor Chinese, nor live in either country. Their governments both do awful things around the world as well as domestically, but here’s one reason I’d rather live in the former: you can publicly criticize the government, and organise an opposition to it.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#539
I registered and asked for my "Employment Data Report".

Besides showing all my pay data for the past two years (pay period start, pay period end, pay date, hours, and pay for each pay period) as I expected, it also lists everyone who has "procured your data" in the past 24 months.

The inquiries were interesting. Four organizations inquired. One is entirely as I expected, one is expected but the timing is slightly odd, one is maybe expected except they made a lot more inquiries than I would have expected, and one I have no idea what the heck they are doing.

The entirely expected one is my bank. Last year I applied for a home equity line of credit and there is one inquire near the start of that, and one that looks like it was just before they approved the loan.

The expected but odd one is Capital One. I applied for a new credit card from them. The oddity is the inquiry was about a week after I had received and started using the new card. I'd have expected it to be before they approved the application.

The one that is maybe expected except for the number of inquiries is Credit Karma. There are 8 inquiries, about a month apart, from January 2020 through September 2020. The report only goes back to January 2020 so it seems likely they were also inquiring before that. So once a month up until around the time Intuit bought Credit Karma.

The one I have no idea at all about is from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dba CMS. That's a federal government agency that runs Medicare and works with the states to run Medicaid. I'm not old enough for Medicare and not poor enough for Medicaid and have not applied for any services CMS deals with as far as I know. The inquiry was in October 2020, and I don't recall doing anything unusual related to health at all around then.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Abolish credit Expand? I and probably you are probably working in arrears for our employers. That is, we don't get paid until after the work is done. That is extending our employers a credit line. The same applies for rent, for utilities, for phone data, for taxes... Credit is at the root of every economic crisis because credit is money.

I get paid as soon as my work is done. Sometimes literally and in physical cash. I'm working on transitioning to getting paid for my time before people even enter my office. Credit is money, but it shouldn't be. We allowed it to become money and it's the reason for so much of the insanity we face today.

Credit was a medium of exchange before cash existed.
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