As reported by
NBC News:
The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of
human resource departments around the country, has assembled what may be
the most powerful and thorough private database of Americans’ personal
information ever created, containing 190 million employment and salary
records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults.
Some of the information in the little-known
database, created through an Equifax-owned company called The Work
Number, is sold to debt collectors, financial service companies and
other entities...
But salary information is also for sale by Equifax through The Work
Number. Its database is so detailed that it contains week-by-week
paystub information dating back years for many individuals, as well as
other kinds of human resources-related information, such as health care
provider, whether someone has dental insurance and if they’ve ever filed
an unemployment claim...
How does Equifax obtain this sensitive and secret information? With the
willing aid of thousands of U.S. businesses, including many of the
Fortune 500. Government agencies -- representing 85 percent of the
federal civilian population, including workers at the Department of
Defense, according to Equifax -- and schools also work with The Work
Number..
That was from an article published in
2013. I naively assumed that the situation might have changed by now. Nope. CNN writes "
Why Equifax will continue to profit by selling your personal information":
"But it's not in the interest of lenders to stop sharing information with the credit rating agencies, Horn said. It could hurt the accuracy of the credit reports they buy back."
It's also in a company's interest to know how much you were making at your last job...so they don't "overpay" you.
ReplyDeleteI work at a financial institution. The real reason we want to report your debts to the credit agencies, especially if you're delinquent, is it's one more lever that may hopefully convince you to pay your debt. In fact, we often require applicants with large collection items to pay those off before we will lend to them (or open checking accounts for them).
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