Re:Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History
by dboreham on Monday October 09, 2017 @09:33PM
(#15438676)
Is this actually true though?
Lenders want to "verify employment" and I can imagine a service where big employers report who is working for them to an agency, allowing lenders to query the agency to check employment.
What I doubt is that employers report salary data to Equifax. I'm an employer and I've never heard of this. I'm good friends with (well...married to) someone who worked in this field and tells me it is highly illegal to divulge non-anonymized salary data to any entity other than the IRS.
I've been trained how to answer calls from lenders asking about our employees (I can answer "yes that person works for us", and provide no other information, period).
The idea that Equifax built a giant database of everyone's salary data is completely at odds with everything I've ever heard as a person running a business with employees.
Also...if they had this data why am I always asked to provide my salary on loan applications?
Lenders want to "verify employment" and I can imagine a service where big employers report who is working for them to an agency, allowing lenders to query the agency to check employment.
What I doubt is that employers report salary data to Equifax. I'm an employer and I've never heard of this. I'm good friends with (well...married to) someone who worked in this field and tells me it is highly illegal to divulge non-anonymized salary data to any entity other than the IRS.
I've been trained how to answer calls from lenders asking about our employees (I can answer "yes that person works for us", and provide no other information, period).
The idea that Equifax built a giant database of everyone's salary data is completely at odds with everything I've ever heard as a person running a business with employees.
Also...if they had this data why am I always asked to provide my salary on loan applications?