Your information is not broadcasted to all companies in existence only those who you've authorized (or have been authorized on your behalf by a malicious actor / identify thief).
This is not udp.
Your second paragraph is false, AFAIK. In the USA, credit bureaus are legally allowed to sell lots of your info to debt collectors and financial service companies. (According to DoanLaw.com) this is why you get “prescreening” offers for credit cards, mortgage refis, etc.
- HIPPA is for health care providers and their vendors
- Traditional wired telecom has long been protected. And fraud over telecom has a special wire fraud statute.
- Mail thru the USPS
- COPPA for PII of under 13 data
- Federal election law prevents election records used for commercial purposes
- basically all of the government classified data system
Famously, Experian ("freecreditreport.com") sold partially filled form information. This is before submission and up to 9 times. Feel free to go to the site signup today and watch the information being streamed (in a hashed form) from your developer console.
Government answers to it's people.
Equifax answers to it's shareholders.
IRS already has that info. The people have the power to control and influence how that data is handled, and distributed. We have no power to compel Equifax to do anything.
That sir is the greatest lie ever told
> Generally speaking, people would get really upset if the IRS shared our tax information for a fee. Effectively, Equifax is doing that, because for most people, employment and income is our tax information. But since it’s a private monopoly, the anti-government types don’t notice or care.
...
> It’s perhaps no exaggeration to note that Equifax is a quasi-governmental agency, a monopoly provider of evidence that you work, where you work, and what you make. If there’s an error, or if someone lies about you, too bad. If Equifax itself is paid to harm you, too bad. If a government agency gets the wrong data and denies you assistance or screws up your immigration status, that’s on you, well, you have limited to no rights in this situation. In some ways, you might have more to fear from Equifax than the IRS.
I think you understand that the point of taking this course of action is to prevent/reduce these kinds of abuses from happening.
The goal isn't to enshrine abuse of authority in governmental agencies, but to prevent nongovernmental agencies from abusing that authority.
I would much rather just whack the big players with antitrust law than give their power to some government agency. A worthless mission statement of some bureaucracy is just that, worthless. If said bureaucracy is using the same information Equifax is using to provide the same services the abuse potential is right there and it's probably only a matter of time until it starts getting used to screw whoever the outgroup of the minute is.
What is sorely needed is privacy legislation that says that data about an individual is fundamentally the property of that individual, and that the license for commercially possessing/processing an individual's data can be revoked at any time. Only then can there be competition in this market.
What will having a market of providers for this service do for me that having a crown corporation or federal ministry won't?
Let's look at it the other way. Could you imagine privatizing the IRS. Why would I want that?
You ready to get a mortgage at prime plus 5% instead of prime plus 1%?
But let me guess, we could create a law about that?
Having the government do things doesn’t magically mean market forces don’t apply any more.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your response also seems to indicate you don't work in financial services. No company is providing credit based solely on income verification (well, not that I'm aware of maybe some fintech is doing it). Most all credit providers are collating data from various sources to make their decision and it varies more than you might think on what goes into a credit decision.
Further, I don't think there's any need at all for laws for this as you suggest, rather just let the IRS offer it as a competing service with private industry. I know many companies that would sign up right away for such a service at the right price point.
I think you misunderstood the comment. It was pointing out that if they only have AGI to go by and no other information, the interest rate on a loan will be much higher, because even with AGI data, that's not enough to know that the borrower is going to pay reliably.
> Further, I don't think there's any need at all for laws for this as you suggest...
Commenter was actually not suggesting this either. It was a sarcastic question intended to point out the folly of assuming we can just create laws to fix market forces.
Just like Facebook gave people granular access to their privacy settings?
If the general population doesn't read EULAs and speed clicks through 99% of dialogs presented. I highly doubt people won't check the _allow all_ box once and be done with it.
Hell Apple gives my significant other the ability to ask apps not to track and they tap to ALLOW the app to track because "I don't mind ads and they'll show me better ads."
What point are you trying to make, exactly?
So then homes would become more affordable, as monthly payments are the limiting factor? Sounds like a win-win, if that actually were to happen. But it seems unlikely for secured credit.
But as I said, the change in interest rates is unlikely to be that large for secured credit like a mortgage, as the main thing guaranteeing the loan is the asset itself.
And for that I had to pay interest/fees on all the other crap so that I "build a credit history"
Interesting, I wonder if someone did the math on that (and that 5% is overinflated I think not even the NINA loans were that high)
I have a high credit score and have never paid a fee or any interest.
Car payment interest? Student loans?
I built up a great credit score with a single, no fee card, that I paid off each month. Total cost $0.
You don’t need an interest paying loan to have a good credit score.
Shopping with a credit card literally involves managing a line of credit.
You don’t see how that relates to creditworthiness?
You also believe purely income information is a better indicator of credit worthiness? It tells you almost nothing (which is why income plus all current expenses is used).
Plenty of people fail to pay even monthly credit card debt. That a massive,massive signal to how they'd handle larger amounts of credit.
They do that, too. You have to provide all of your income data over the past like 3 years and explain any extra income (why did your parents give you $1000 a couple years ago?). Credit score is just one more datapoint, and I think it's more about your score being "not bad" (i.e. you didn't screw a previous creditor) than it is about it being "good."
Something similar could be done to break up big banking if the US Postal Service allowed people to open up super simple checking and savings accounts.
There's a great opportunity here for the IRS to provide this service (with revenue from charging the requesting entities), with citizens being self-sovereign over what data is shared and who it is shared with. Especially because they could provide verified data in a very narrow scope (for instance only sharing Adjusted Gross Income and nothing else).