Your Data

One of the scariest things in the world to me is that if my wife and I have a conversation about wicker furniture the next time I use my phone to search something on the internet or to look at something like Facebook I am inundated with ads showing up for wicker furniture.   How all of our data is used today is vastly different then it was not very long ago.  Virtually everyone has cell phones, even people like my 74 year mom (who swore less then a decade or so ago she’d never touch one!).  Now she regularly spends time on it and uses it for a variety of things.  Something unthinkable to me happened in a pretty short time frame.

One thing that specifically bugs me with data is the credit bureaus selling private information as leads.  If we think about what a credit bureau does it is data driven to the core.  The 3 main ones in our country; Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion regularly keep tract of payment history, accounts open, account balances, etc and derive credit scores and other analytical and data driven info that banks, insurance companies, and even people like landlords use regularly to evaluate a person.  It isn’t the collecting and evaluating of data that bothers me, it’s the sale of it to others when not requested by the consumer.

Just last month we took a mortgage application from a prospective borrower and the next couple days they were inundated with calls from all corners of the world at all times of the day.  Some of these callers are very predatory in nature and will act like they are affiliated with someone you know or actually someone else all together to try and get business.  It is scary and in my mind does no benefit to the consumer.   The consumer can absolutely shop for the best deal they want on credit but it should be at their discretion. 

The reason this happens is because some lending institutions chose to market through what is called a “trigger lead”.  This means that when your credit is pulled and certain metrics are met they will ship your data (name, address, loan size, loan type, phone, email, etc) off to a company in exchange for a couple bucks.  When you add it up it is big business to the credit bureaus.  That being said it isn’t something they were naturally designed to be in the business of, it is something they have developed to obtain another revenue source from in order to increase revenues and profits.

A person’s credit is some of their most private information and various third parties have no right to know about it when not asked to evaluate.  But fear not, we do have something that amounts to the “do not call list” of avoiding trigger leads and solicitations when having your credit pulled through the opt out pre screen process.  You can go to www.optoutprescreen.com  or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT to learn more about the process or get it started, it is free to do.  You’ll find you may get less spam type email, less of what most of us consider junk mail, and less phone calls.  The same type of solicitations you can opt out of come from credit card companies and consumer financing folks also but the mortgage one’s seem to be particularly aggressive and deceitful unfortunately.  

This is not something you have to do but it does help keep your information less public and helps avoid unwanted solicitations.