This Dilbert comic is 100% apt today:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-10-14/
Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#12Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it the same way, but that would have been pretty bad in and of itself. Why should an ID theft prevention service have data on me unless I have a business relationship with them?
Going back a step, why should Experian have data on you?
How else would credit history (and credit in general) work?
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#14The world should calm down. Take a few years to review what we've done in last 50 years.
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#15The world should calm down. Take a few years to review what we've done in last 50 years.
Yeah. Let's rent a holiday cottage with all of us and talk it though.
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going back a step, why should Experian have data on you?
How else would credit history (and credit in general) work?
Voluntarily?
If you want to use credit, you have to let lenders collaborate to determine whether they're willing to lend to you, if that's their criteria for making decisions.
If you don't want to use credit, they get no special pass to store and use personal data about you.
I'm from Europe, where generally personal privacy gets more emphasis than it seems to in some places, notably the US. We have explicit laws about collecting and processing personal data, but certain organisations seem to get a free pass for no apparent reason. As this story demonstrates, the risks are still there.
That said, perhaps we shouldn't be too worried. The last time I paid a little real money to get hold of my personal credit report from one of these credit reporting organisations, it was so riddled with obvious errors, including more than a few wildly inaccurate data points, that I was on the phone to them for something like half an hour to get them to correct everything. At that point (I kid you not) the woman on the phone asked if I would be much longer because it was the end of the day and time for her to go home.
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#17Well, is it fair to say that the credit system in the US is fu ed up? Oligopoly of 3 agencies have pretty much entire control of your fate. Yes Fate. Purchasing power means cash and since credit = cash these companies control the cash that you have at disposal. Which means your FATE. Its insanely difficult to pierce oligopolistic structures and Cartels because of obvious reasons. But some day some startup needs to ta…
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Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#18Except there's actually no such thing as "identity theft" - it's a mere figment of the credit industry's (tracking industry's) fantasy in which they're omniscient, and an attempt to slowly push the responsibility for bank fraud onto uninvolved third parties. In reality, some would-be bank fraudsters got ahold of some non-secret information.
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#19Well, is it fair to say that the credit system in the US is fu ed up? Oligopoly of 3 agencies have pretty much entire control of your fate. Yes Fate. Purchasing power means cash and since credit = cash these companies control the cash that you have at disposal. Which means your FATE. Its insanely difficult to pierce oligopolistic structures and Cartels because of obvious reasons. But some day some startup needs to ta…
Yes absolutely. I currently cannot buy a house despite having a six-figure income for 4 years, money in savings, and having no debt save my student loan. All because of bad decisions I made in years past.
Re: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
#20Except there's actually no such thing as "identity theft" - it's a mere figment of the credit industry's (tracking industry's) fantasy in which they're omniscient, and an attempt to slowly push the responsibility for bank fraud onto uninvolved third parties. In reality, some would-be bank fraudsters got ahold of some non-secret information.
I agree. Identity theft is just a particular method of fraud with a name that mitigates the responsibility of the institutions that enabled the fraudsters.
I don't know if it is one one of those terms that was invented by one of those PR agencies that invented terms like "climate change" to mitigate the visceral impact of "global warming."[1] But it certainly has ended up as a term that obfuscates the responsibility of banks to stop treating public information like passwords.