Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credit Reports

Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by giraffe_lady on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:17PM (#34313807)

French bureaucracy is infamous for a reason and it's not just the state itself. A CDI is a certain type of employment contract, and a CDI is a CDI and everything else isn't, and a CDI is required for almost any significant loan. Workarounds are possible for smaller loans IF you have a personal relationship with the bank officer servicing that area. But if you didn't grow up there, or don't normally bank there, or they're suspicious of your race or tattoos, or were your bully in high school or or or. This sort of thing is more or less exactly what the credit reporting setup was meant to eliminate.

It doesn't matter what it "should be" proof of or what a reasonable person could infer from this income or documentation of it. If you don't have a CDI, which even many full-time employed people don't, you're in a hard spot.

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Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by mixmastamyk on Monday January 09, 2023 @04:57PM (#34316775)

Again, I don't see anything here that requires a third-party as intermediate. If you have a system broken in another way, go right ahead and fix that. But it is not sufficient justification for incredibly bad actors such as Experian et al to exist.

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Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by nicolas_t on Monday January 09, 2023 @06:14PM (#34317919)

That's the thing, based on my experience living in different countries like France as described above or in Japan for a few years (where I was systematically rejected for credit cards when my ex who was a student with significantly less income than me was approved), I find that having third parties as intermediate setup a reporting credit system with clear rules like the US is so much better.

The US system has issues but it's less broken than every other countries I've lived in.

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Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by mixmastamyk on Monday January 09, 2023 @08:46PM (#34319260)

But what about the other 99% of us that aren't living internationally in multiple countries we have no history in?

The idea that everyone is forced to create a public profile so you have the option of getting a mortgage sucks. You have no right to a mortgage at other's expense. If you want folks to trust you, get a co-signer, put down roots and stay a while.

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Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by nicolas_t on Monday January 09, 2023 @09:04PM (#34319401)

Ok, granted, living in different countries is not something that most people do, so let's talk about the other big advantage that a system with a credit score has. It protects against racism. If you don't have that, it's very easy for a bank officer to reject a mortgage because you're the wrong colour. You'll tell me there's law against discrimination but what often happens is people discriminates and then find other excuses to justify the rejection. Are you going to tell me that this isn't a problem?

Without a credit score that follows simple algorithmic rules, how do you want to prevent this from happening? A credit score that has rules that people know in advance may be gameable but it also creates fairness by making it easy for everyone to know what to do to get a decent score.

Now, the fact is that the credit score could be managed by government agencies (although honestly, I'm not sure any government is much better in term of data security), there could be stricter fines in case of data breach (that sounds like a good idea), but those are implementation details.

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Re:Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credi... by mixmastamyk on Monday January 09, 2023 @09:16PM (#34319501)

Lofty goals but too many degrees of separation I'd say. Not my responsibility to fix the problems of society. I'd go farther and say ubiquitous credit is not a human right, to the extent to force its drawbacks on the rest of us.

That said, I'd agree that both of our plans could be implemented a lot better.

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