No, this is only true because the law does not meaningfully restrict abusive contracts. Sure, a credit card issuer should [0] be able to ask some agency for information on your credit risk. It does not follow at all that the issuer should have permission to give information back to the agency.

[0] Even this is debatable. One might reasonably argue that the use of inscrutable conditions for the issuance of credit cards is discriminatory and should, as a matter of public policy, be disallowed. As a simple example of how this could work, all credit card issuers could be required to instead issue prepaid cards with identical terms, benefits, and usage from a merchant’s perspective, and credit could be an opt-in extra feature.

What's more bothersome to me is that these companies are scooping up every bit of information they can about me and selling it to anyone. Did I consent to TheWorkNumber? I definitely did not with the first few employers / payroll processors who have sold out my payroll data.

I Google my full name and the first hit is some background check site that shows my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, and that's just the bait to get someone to pay for whatever else they know about me...

'Credit' information is the tip of the iceberg.

Your existence in the world isn't a secret. Every scrap of that is public information. You have a postal address to get mail, you register your car with your state to pay taxes on it, etc.

1. Any of those scraps of data have negligible value by themselves, but when they're aggregated and traded their value is vastly increased.

2. I don't have any choice in how those scraps of data were originally gathered and shared. Should I not to have an address? Pay my taxes? Register my vehicles?

2. So? Why should you have a choice in it? Those things are classified as public records, available to anyone.

Maaaaaybe birth certificates should be public, but why should who owns what car be public? Or who lives at what address?

There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.

> There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.

Until you get too large, powerful, and rich, then the government regulates you. This is the purpose of regulation, to control the abusive use of power.

The agreements you sign when requesting and getting credit explicitly grant that right.

"Credit Reports: You agree that we have a right to obtain a credit report in connection with our review of your application and after we establish an account, to administer the account. You agree that we may report to others our credit experience with you. At your request we will provide the name and address of each consumer-reporting agency from which we obtained a report about you."

Was it plastered across the very top of the form in bold type? No. Was it "buried in pages of small print legalese"? No.

So they can weed applicants out. This is very common in the fire service. Applications can be 40 pages long and they want you to list each financial account, balances, limits, etc. It's ridiculous. But I know just why they're doing it. I also think such requirements are weeding out minority applicants.

at least most agencies have stopped asking you to write down all of your social media accounts & passwords. or requiring you to add HR managers/etc as friends.

A loan is shared risk. If it wasn’t there should be no interest payments above inflation and labor.

Where is the line for invasiveness? I mean, if I knew a couple was having issues and they were in counseling, but they didn’t start until eight years in, that’s a bad sign and any therapist will probably tell you so. If a bank is allowed to know everything about you they will say no to a loan, probably killing the relationship once and for all. Similarly if they know he has a doctor appointment to look at the lump on his testicle. Predicting people’s lives are about to get very difficult and then forcing it to happen by rejecting or calling a loan is movie villain cruel.

If I were their friend and knew about the marital strife, and they wanted to borrow money from me to do something expensive, my reaction would be no. It was always going to be no because I don’t loan money to friends unless I don’t want that friend. But what I’m going to say is, “besides, those two aren’t gonna be together in three years so how would I get my money back?”

You want banks in your bedroom? Because by their logic this is useful information and if it’s available it would increase their profit margins...

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Credit used to be much, much harder to get, and more expensive. You got loans from friends. You shopped at a particular store for years and built up your reputation before they would offer you credit. You pawned something. Or you just saved your money and paid cash.

Completely untrue. But if you want good loan terms, yes you will need to participate in the system of sharing credit terms, because reputable banks don't want to deal with bad debt.

Yes because it is. No because you want something that someone else has (£€¥$) and that someone needs some kind of assurance that they could ever get their money back.