I spent the weekend researching data removal methods and decided to start with my credit report. I’m not even going to get into all of the alarming privacy invasions that popped up during this process. But when I got to the experian report, I was met with T&C box that says I have to hand over my phone carrier info and it wouldn’t let me proceed without doing so. The bureaus are legally required to give you one free report a year. It’s bad enough that these companies are even given rights to my data and now they’re using it to request further information.
I’m just so angry, frustrated, and violated.
Credit cards and these damn credit agencies are a cancer on society. I don’t know anyone at this point who hasn’t been a victim of identity theft because of these aholes and their shenanigans.
Been a while, but in several US states where the free report was mandated, they also allowed a request to be mailed in, of even faxed. Old school, but I would be surprised if they don’t still have some of those methods, and probably don’t require web form consents to privacy invading terms.
I tried the mail in form and it was ignored
I’m pretty sure that federally it’s mandated that you have to be able to mail it in.
If you don’t pay a bunch extra for some sort of certified mail, you don’t have proof of mailing and they can ignore you.
Not legally, but also yes legally.
guessing they’re using the carrier’s data for verification. name, address, phone number, socials and at least partials of credit cards, bank accounts. whatever relevant that they have.
this is all data the credit bureau has on you already
Can confirm, it is information they already have. Below is likely the API the telco exposes to the bureau. Each data point queried returns true, false, or a confidence score.
It is intended as an anti-fraud tool. Not saying I agree with it. Something like PGP is sufficient for building out a web-of-trust without needing to share my personal information.
I’ve run into issues with SMS-based 2FA (yikes) on some websites because my phone number was a landline number I purchased then later transferred to my wireless carrier.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed some websites have the typical “we’ll confirm your information with your wireless carrier” verbiage, but those generally mention they do so to determine whether the number is a landline or wireless.
I’m super unsure of what’s going on in this case, but when I first saw this screenshot this is what came to mind.
Experian is stuck on an old phone number for 2FA and I can’t remove it because I don’t have a phone number. I really hate how they tie everything to a phone number.
Me too, and it’s worse because it’s not secure.
I keep saying this a lot but I don’t know why recently (the last ~5 years) everyone is jumping on SMS-based 2FA. I remember this was really big around 2010 and as a developer all the tools for SMS-based 2FA are deprecated or unmaintained (at least in my programming language). It seems like all these websites that jumped on board 10 years late have very poor security practices.
I really hate how they tie everything to a phone number.
The online social security
Write them a physical letter. Tell them phones are against your religion. You are amish now.
They won’t automatically use your phone bill to bolster your credit but they will use it as a form of authentication. That’s the infuriating part to me. Miss a payment? Your credit score can drop. Make every payment on time? Nothing.
It’s not authentication. They are specifically requesting access to cellular information that my service provider can’t sell to them unless I give them authorization. Authorization to obtain my most intimate data (communication usage) in order to complete their data profile on me is not the same thing as authentication.
There is a way to request it by mail, the phone thing is just a quicker way for them to verify you are who you say you are because they ALREADY know all the information, they just want to make sure YOU know the right phone number. If you use the wrong number they might give you an alternative option, or it will eventually tell you the only option is by US mail.
Pretty much anyone who has your phone number can use that information to look you up in a database, experian just spells it out because they get hacked so often its a liability for them to store any information at all, In a normal functioning society such a company would fail and never be taken seriously, but in capitalist america they get to decide if you’re worth lending money to, WHAT A COUNTRY!!!
I’m not really sure what you expect to be able to do with your credit report, but you should request it through https://www.annualcreditreport.com/. That’s the legit source.
This happened on annualcreditreport.com.
What’s experian?
Its one of the US’s three main
socialcredit score companies, that determines your ability to rent or buy a home or car or get a job by selling your credit data to companies that perform background checks on you, background credit checks which you pay for.Its one of 3 companies in the USA that gather tons of information about everyone so they can come up with a magic number that landlords and banks can use to decide if a person is worth giving money to or not, and also to sell you a service that will notify you when they inevitably get hacked again and someone tries to “steal” your “identity”
time to look up some alternatives.
There are no alternatives to the credit bureaus for your credit report.
Try GDPR them. Fuck their form.
Why would a US credit agency care about the GDPR?
I wonder if it affects them if they are collecting purchasing data from US citizens residing in the EU. If nothing else, the US military and diplomats are there. From what I’ve found, it protects anyone in the EU, citizen or not.
Us corporate doesn’t follow domestic law, cute of you to assume they would follow a foreign country’s laws.
No applicable here, like at all
German democracy volk republic?!
Don’t use credit.
Good luck with that in the US. Credit is like a shitty pay to win scheme that you’re required to play. Some jobs check your credit report and unless you have cash to buy a house you’d be fucked without credit.
That may be viable for some combinations of finances and lifestyle, but credit scores are used in interactions that don’t involve borrowing money. I’m inclined to believer they shouldn’t be, but I don’t make the rules.
Good luck with that.
