I had a difficult time getting loans to go to college many years ago. Come to find out my credit was through the floor due to all 3 agencies misattributing dozens of pages of bad loans to me starting when I was only a toddler. The middle initials & socials were 1 character off each, but it all still went to my name.
Unfortunately I didn't have the knowledge to freeze my credit when I was 3 years old - my fault, I should have known I would later suffer the consequences of my inaction.
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We need a financial revolution (which is what OWS was all about -- and you know how they responded to that - especially in SFO.... "people are mad at the FED!, so must remove all planter boxes in front of the SF FED and install giant granite bollards and update our lifting stop gate at the entrance - and we have to get our fed workers to stop bragging about their $30,000 a month bonuses loudly on BART (yes this is an actual thing)
The federal government requires that all three major bureaus (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) provide you one credit report each per year, for free. You can request it here, the official source for these mandated free reports:
If someone has your information, they can open a credit card under your name and max it out. Or even more common, they’ll get a car loan under your name. Since loans are furnished at the end of the day, they’ll often get 2 or 3 car loans in the same day.
Issue isn’t if you have debt or not. Credit rating agencies start tracking very early, and what they’ll track for you is basically “no data/low credit score.”
That doesn’t mean you’re not in the system, or more importantly - doesn’t mean qn attacker can’t take out debt in your name.
A freeze is the only thing that stops this for you and your kids. I hate that it works this way but such is life.
Why not? Do you ever anticipate getting a mortgage? If yes, then you probably should be.
But credit scores are used for apartment rentals, and even employment.
This is false.
Millenials are trailing previous generations a little, but > 50% of them now own homes:
https://rentalhousingjournal.com/more-than-50-percent-of-mil...
So yeah, 10 years ago, very, very few millenials owned a home. But that was true for 23 year old boomers too.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...
Millennials own less homes than boomers did at their age. Though based upon the data Gen Z is possibly turning things around.
"Most US millennials finally own homes – and it’s not thanks to their parents"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/17/millennial-h...
Even the trailer parks aren't safe, as the companies buy them from the owners, evict all the tenants living in their own houses, and then develop the land into more unaffordable HOA clone mega houses, luxury apartments, or McMansions. Near where I live six of the eight trailer parks have disappeared in the last four years and have been turned into two separate campgrounds, a car wash, a dirt parking lot waiting to be redeveloped, a warehouse, and a new luxury senior apartment complex, with intent to redevelop the others into retail or housing shortly. There's been a spike in homelessness because the people living in these trailer homes couldn't afford to move their houses and didn't have anywhere left to go even if they could.
1. just ignore it, on the basis that the statistical data collected by many private organizations and the federal government say that it is incorrect.
2. as much as I hate quoting Bezos, he does have a good line about how, if anecdotes and data don't align, there's probably something wrong with the way the data is being measured and/or collected.
3. Accept that the data is correct, and that this sort of anecdotal reporting is also correct, but represents conditions that were also the case for previous generations yet somehow never became part of the zeitgeist.
I don't know which to choose. Maybe there are others.
I have a friend that works for one, and he's making a lot of money.
They come in, overbid, pay cash, and frequently spiff the agents (in a legal way).
Then they gut the place, and turn it into a pretty decent rental.
If you don't think these rental investment corporations are a problem, then I won't gainsay that. I just have some local IRL experience in the matter, and have seen it discussed.
I'm not in a debate. I made an offhand comment, which was not unique to me (it has been bandied about in popular culture for quite some time), you called it "false," in a fairly harsh manner, and I didn't attack back, because I like to behave myself, here.
If my offhand comment offended you, then I am sincerely sorry, and you have my apology, but it won't change the way I think or interact, and I'll likely offend again. I'm a decent person, and don't mean to offend, but I also have the approach I have, and some people find it offensive. I'm not sure why, because no one ever takes the time to explain. They just attack. I've learned not to attack back, and make my best guess at what their problem was. Given that data (my guess), I may (or may not) choose to modify my approach in future interactions.
In the aggregate, I yam what I yam, and some folks like it, and some folks don’t. Seems most folks find me easy to get along with.
No worries. It's all good. Have a great day!
You made a remark about millenial home ownership that, according to data collected by the relevant agencies, doesn't appear to be correct.
I just pointed out that millenial home ownership is only a little behind the age-adjusted levels for the last 4 "generations".
I think this is important - if the data is correct, then it's essentially a myth that millenials have no access to home ownership, and there's a certain kind of psycho-social danger to this idea being believed (particularly among millenials).
It is of course possible that the data is incorrect, or misleading, and I'm interested in that possibility, because the "story" about millenials and home ownership is widespread, and perhaps we should be alert to the idea that the data is not representing reality correctly.
Then you mentioned corporate residential real estate investment, which I certainly agree is a problem, but that seems orthogonal to the basic question of whether or not millenials do or do not own housing at roughly the same level as prior generations. I wondered if you saw some specific reason to mention it. If it were true that they do not, then certainly corporate RE investment could be a part of the reason. But it appears that in broad terms, they do, and so although it would be nice to end corporate RE investment somehow, it doesn't seem to be a particularly large problem.
I only take on debt I can immediately pay off (ie. credit card debt), but it still is important to demonstrate to creditors.
In addition, in the US these files are used for other purposes than taking out a loan, for example renting an apartment, for some jobs, etc.
I recommend building up a credit history even if you don't need it now. You might later. There are plenty of articles on the web about how to start, basically getting a credit card (perhaps secured) and slowly building up your credit.
I am lucky enough to be a cash buyer. I tried to rent a house for a year a few months ago but my credit rating was not good enough. I have a couple of credit cards which I pay off every month (so good, my credit utilization is low) but by the rating companys' POV there wasn't enough to go on: not enough accounts, and no accounts apart from the CCs: no mortgage, no car payments etc. The fact that I'm a homeowner doesn't appear in the report.
https://privacyrights.org/resources/availability-sensitive-i...
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/10boag2/whats_the_...
However, my SSN definitely got out there somehow (SSN is available in the credit header, according to the privacyrights.org article), and the freeze stopped some rampant problems I was having. The breaking point was when I came home one day to find a $2,000 Nordictrack rowing machine on my front porch which someone in far-away Wisconsin had ordered (which I assume they had intended to have shipped to themselves in Wisconsin). It took me a long time to get NordicTrack to agree to take it back and cancel the debt.
The victims of fraud in these cases is the banks, not you.
You still have your identity. The banks/creditors gave their money (not yours) to a criminal through their own neglect.
It's an unconscionable fantasy that you as an individual are the victim in these situations when you had no involvement whatsoever.
Laws need to be updated to reflect this reality. Banks will continue to act haphazardly so long as they are allowed to pass the bill for their own carelessness onto innocent people.
Awareness should be spread by disavowing the entire "identity theft" deceit any time it comes up in a public forum.
Highly relevant Mitchell and Webb radio skit:
There are plenty of things wrong with the current credit identity system, the name of identity theft is either not one of them at all or near the bottom of the list.
This is exactly the fantasy that we need to dispel, not rationalize.
Nobody steals your identity. You always have your identity, and nobody else ever does. Your identity is not the few pieces of trivia a criminal can easily discover about you.
The criminal never takes or has your identity. The bank is simply neglecting to correctly identify someone.
> steals that identity to abuse it
Criminals are not abusing your identity, they are abusing the banks' careless failure to correctly identify people.
> to abuse it and leave you with the baggage
The criminal is not leaving you with the baggage, the bank is. They use willfully inept processes, because they have tricked you into believing you should bear the responsibility for the consequences of their own hubris.
It is bank fraud and imitation with the intent to abuse the reputation of the person imitated. It should be illegal to imitate you when it negatively hurts you. It’s illegal to imitate police and doctors etc because it uses their reputations for fraudulent means. This is the same thing.
Banks are the financially defrauded victims in this situation, but the victims are also individuals because banks passed the reputational risk of fraud to the customers. If your credit score is hurt and you need to hire lawyers to fix it or you get denied for a mortgage (or just a good rate), you’ve experienced tangible harm.
Banks know they experience harm here. They plan for it. It’s baked into the prices and financial statements. Read the essays by Patrick McKenzie, he’ll argue that fraud is intentionally tolerated. They know that the consumer won’t be expected pay once the fraud is discovered. That’s not their goal, and they’re not being deceitful here.
You can argue if this system is overall good or bad, but it almost certainly has led to cheaper credit for everyone. Outsourcing credit worthiness to a magic national number (or 3) is cheaper than every credit union assessing risk themselves, with less knowledge.
In that case I am not a victim of the fraudster, I am a victim of the bank.
The banks do not have sufficient incentive to improve their identification methods, so long as we tolerate the concept that we bear any responsibility for a transaction that involves only themselves and a fraudster who knows the answers to a few trivia questions about me.
You’re not the victim of people who merely believe the lies and start to avoid you.
To me that was akin to being ostracized because your reputation was ruined by an impersonation.
On the contrary, they stand to risk 100% of the loaned money. What more could be at risk. Also the fair credit reporting act has pretty strict requirements for what a bank or credit agency should do when you’ve told them the debt is fraudulent, returning you to whole eventual.
What would be required to fix false identity frauds? Is that more or less tolerable for society than X% of people dealing with a stolen identity. What about people who have some problematic history (ran away from home, prior homeless, etc)? How would strict requirements impact them?
Really I guess my question. Oxygen_crisis, why do you believe identity theft is actually a problem that needs solving?
I think the argument is that the hurt is generated by the bank. Why isn't it the bank's responsibility to have their shit together and not do that?
Two big problems are:
1. If you happen to be one of the victims of the fraud, it hurts! Sometimes a lot! A lot more than it hurts the bank.
2. If you don't like the level of (in)security that the banks have chosen, what other options do you have? Right now I don't know, I think maybe Bitcoin is your best bet?
Because nobody can take out a fraudulent loan in bitcoin? Well.. that’s problem accurate.
I’m just not sure how is bitcoin even the tiniest bit relevant in this case?
If you still disagree please try to make an argument without mentioning banks. Identity theft covers a lot more than banking fraud so the explanation shouldn't explain how you want the term to be changed to something which focuses solely on banks.
The processes in place do suck. That has nothing to do with the name of the crime though.
The victim of impersonation isn't held accountable for the action of the criminal, particularly with banks. That's precisely what identity theft laws protect. I'm in favor of making that process even easier for the victim wherever possible but changing the name is not that.
Someone who steals my passwords can impersonate me, they can not become me. Someone who tricks people into thinking they are me is still not me. An account is not an identity.
My online accounts are not me, and I am not my online accounts.
"1a: the distinguishing character or personality of an individual
2: the condition of being the same with something described or asserted
3a: sameness of essential or generic character in different instances"
Or the Cambridge dictionary:
"a person's name and other facts about who they are:"
Of course, you're always welcome to intentionally pick the incorrect context (going back to Merriam-Webster):
"4: an equation that is satisfied for all values of the symbols"
And just as easily rant the name of the crime has nothing to do with math so it needs to be renamed.
How this is interpreted is the primary problem that needs to be solved in order to legislate the issue, and from the interpretations you're supporting, it seems you're firmly on the side of the parties failing to identify fraudsters correctly, versus the innocent individuals.
As I've stated I'm in favor of the individuals. When doing so, I like to stick to factual and logical reasons why instead of insist the root of the problem is the chosen definition of "identity" does not match my preferred one. The root of the problem is the current process for dealing with identity theft is more burdensome than it needs to be on individuals. If you change the name it's still too burdensome because, outside of you, everyone already interprets "identity" to mean what it should in this case. That the process is bad is not proof the interpretation of the phrase is bad and needs to be fixed, it's proof the process is bad and needs to be fixed.
Just because someone disagrees with one component of your stance does not mean they automatically agree with all opposing positions that followed from it.
I don't think it's possible to avoid mentioning the banks. They are the ones committing the harm against you.
They are a stand-in for numerous other institutions who abuse you. You can take the name "bank" to mean any organization who is defrauded, and then abuses you to obtain repayment for that fraud.
I think it's important to recognize that this is a two-step process. The middle-man in this procedure is crucial, because they are the ones with a lot of power to use the legal system against you. If they were somebody other than a bank or other significant corporation, you'd be able to say, "No, I'm not the John Smith you gave money to. Go away and find that person." The imbalance makes it necessary to define the argument in terms of banks and similar institutions.
Claiming identity theft is precisely the process to notify the bank (or others) they cannot legally abuse you to get repayment for that fraud or you are not responsible for those crimes or whatever occured on your behalf. Under identity theft laws they are responsible for the loss due to fraud, not you. The same as credit card companies. The legal system is used but as much by you saying "I didn't buy that house, clear my records and eat the losses" as by the bank initially saying "this person didn't pay their loan". To not involve the legal system by both parties just opens up an even worse can of worms of fraud.
One thing I do agree on is that anything that can reasonably be done to make the process easier on the victim of identity theft should be as the process is too hard on them right now. Probably more fines to most middlemen to increase the cost further beyond their losses. I just don't think changing the name of the crime has anything to do with that kind of improvement.
This is actually a great example.
If you impersonate me in an e-mail and talk someone into sending a thousand dollars they owed me into some strange account, a reasonable victim isn't going to come to me and say "we're square now, because I paid that fraudster's account what I owed you."
Instead they should admit they made a mistake in assuming it was me based on suspiciously inadequate information and pursue the fraudster if they want their money back.
That is, after all, what an “identity provider” actually provides.
Giving up ownership of our own identities led to very harmful results.
It's the latter that's being stolen. It's a crime against both you and your friends and creditors.
I kind of feel like banks are fans of one mister Dewey Crowe, "The anus is upon you" to protect your data. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1489428/characters/nm0380632?re...)
It took me months to prove that I wasa childless, 20-something dork in bay area...
nightmare - but any "credit" agency is scum
My nephew is now 20. When he was 5 we gifted him some cash in a savings account (to teach him about money stuff). We were immediately served notice that he was overdue on two mortgages. It took three years to get that straightened out (and find out that his ss# was already compromised).
What a mess. What kind of an agency would see the ss#for a literal child and just think, yep, this is fine.
I used to get my free credit report every year, but I stopped, which I'm sure is exactly what these scumbags want.
IME AnnualCreditReport.com was easy-to-use and never sends ads. It sounds like you were tricked into using something else. If you genuinely had an issue with AnnualCreditReport.com (unlikely), please do tell the FTC: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/free-credit-reports
Like, name one thing they actually do right. Literally anything. I challenge anyone who reads this to name a single bad thing that would happen if all these leech companies got Thanos-snapped out of the universe tomorrow.
We might have worse actors or arbitrary decisions or more expensive loans. Or, why not, all three!
So that was 15 years ago when these mortgages were taken out in his name? Placing it between 2007 and 2008.
That's basically right at the inflection point when the housing market had gotten out of control and started crashing down. This was caused because anyone could get a mortgage, regardless of whether they could afford it or who they were. The banks were accused of doing zero due diligence. In some cases no income verification, no identity verification, no job verification, etc.. You could take a mortgage out in your dogs name, and also apparently a 5 year old's name too.
I like to think that the system is better now, but that's probably a fantasy.
I have a very common name and some guy 20-30 years older than me had past due child support. I also have no kids. This was my first house purchase so I was completely ignorant of the process. What blew my mind is that before verifying whether or not that was me, they informed the sellers of it. I forget the process I went through to prove it wasn't me, I probably just showed them the guys age vs mine or something. That was wild though, like, the sellers could've just cancelled the sale right there if they didn't want to sell to a supposedly deadbeat dad. I couldn't believe they informed the sellers.
Buying a house is awful. Telling someone all of my finances and everything else when I already have an approved mortgage. Ugh. I did have a worse experience SELLING that house though, if you can imagine.
I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.
But then she was charged in the United States with offences including trademark infringement, and was told to pay damages of $US1.2 million ($1.8 million).
So, give it time, when you least expect it, they will take 60 days to validate something about your account before allowing you to unfreeze it.
I had to deal fraudsters getting cell phones and also electricity to their apartment.
Setting a freeze up here solved it.
Seems to be an Equifax product.
It’s maddening that these companies give out service with wrong variations of my name and no ID but then want me to jump through hours of hoops to get it removed from collections.
Luckily I got it all resolved prior to rates shooting up so I was able to refi at all time low rates or this would have cost me a lot of money.
> A. Yes. NCTUE provides information to companies that provide consumers with pre-approved offers of credit. If you would like to Opt-Out and exclude NCTUE information about you from being used in lists provided to companies that make pre-approved offers of credit (as provided in the Fair Credit Reporting Act), you may call us toll free at 1-888-327-4376.
> You may also submit your request via mail to NCTUE at the address below. Please include your name, address, Social Security number and date of birth in your request.
... well that is infuriating.
Specifically:
1. Would it prevent any future occurrences?
2. Would it do anything to help with the leaks that have already occurred?
And none of the 3 allow MFA via something else than text/email.
However, once you've got it set up, it's very easy to freeze and unfreeze them. Just keep all the URLs, usernames, and passwords in a secure note somewhere, and any time you need to apply for credit, unfreeze them for a day or a week.
I used to have all sorts of identity theft problems (people taking out credit in my name) but Freezing my credit has solved it.
Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
TransUnion: https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
Equifax: https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/cred...
I truly hate these companies but holding my nose and going through the process was worthwhile and I'd recommend it to anyone.