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A comment on How Equifax Became a Private IRS. Parent comment

Re:How Equifax Became a Private IRS by coderintherye on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:06PM (#34498628)
The point is not about limiting it to AGI, the point is setting limits on what data is shared so that you as the consumer always control what a requesting company sees. Don't want your data shared? No problem, you can set to deny all requests. Only want to share AGI but not your entire return, just allow that field, etc.

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.

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Re:How Equifax Became a Private IRS by notinfuriated on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:38PM (#34498859)
> 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.

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.

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Re:How Equifax Became a Private IRS by vuln on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:13PM (#34498664)
People don't understand how credit scores work and you want to give them the power to allow granular permissions?

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."

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Re:How Equifax Became a Private IRS by j33zusjuice on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:39PM (#34499353)
Some percentage of people making bad decisions doesn’t mean all people should be forced to make bad decisions. Yes, it’s a good thing that Facebook and apple allow those controls. Yes, it’s a shame more people don’t care about controlling their data. That doesn’t mean people who do care shouldn’t be able to control it.

What point are you trying to make, exactly?

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Re:How Equifax Became a Private IRS by foota on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:49PM (#34499424)
I believe their point is that if you don't provide any piece of information, the consumer of it would just assume the worst. Or, they would average it out, so that the burden of not being accurate would affect the people that do provide it.
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