Only when you give said company authorization to review your credit worthiness, then they may attempt to pull your credit information.

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 first paragraph is true (to the extent that nobody pretends to have your authorization).

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.

I don't disagree that the companies are selling your contact information and most likely some fuzzy information ranges (age, gender, martial status, rent/own, income) that's all that's really needed to snail mail "pre approvals" hint you're not really approved for anything until you sign to allow them to actually pull your credit. Preapproved just means you meet the minimum threshold of potentially making them more money than the cost of a 50 cent envelope/paper/bulk mailing rate.

Agree that most of the data needed for a generic prescreening is available from lots of data brokerage (doesn’t necessarily need a credit bureau), but that DoanLaw.com article I read to verify my memory states that credit bureaus may legally sell some data points that can only accurately be sourced from a credit bureau.

Would you mind sharing the article? I'd like to read more about which specific data points. Thanks!

Outside of state laws and HIPAA, what national laws in the United States limit information sharing from a private party?

Video rental records is it. Everything else is up for sale.

I believe there are a number of siloed categories:

- 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

- FERPA for data held by colleges/unis.

> Your information is not broadcasted to all companies in existence only those who you've authorized

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.

This seems a great opportunity. Fill in false information, don't submit it, and watch your credit score raise?

Filling out a form has no bearing on your credit score. This mechanism is leveraged to monetize someone's information independent of that person's credit score or the accuracy of the information.

Why?

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.

Government is able to compel Equifax to do things, and is run by we, the people, so it seems like we should be able to something, for sufficiently large and powerful numbers of "we".

Ah but you see, you're not friends with a senator.

>>Government answers to it's people.

That sir is the greatest lie ever told

Matt addresses this in the article directly:

> 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.

The government already has the power to do those things. The track record of credit reporting agencies shows it's almost impossible to hold them accountable, so what's the advantage to having these private entities profiting off of us again?

That's a pretty disengenous argument.

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.

>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.

Antitrust law isn't a solution here. Many different surveillance companies keeping records on us provides the same problems (if not more) than one large company.

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.

I don't see why a market based solution is needed here.

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?