Wow placing a freeze requires filling out a PDF form, attaching a scan of your ID, and then sending it in over email, mail, or fax. The PDF lacks built in form fields you can type in. The extra friction is probably a feature: https://assets.equifax.com/wfs/theworknumber/assets/twn_Empl... (the exif data on that PDF shows the name of the employee that created it and that they used Word 2010...)
The Equifax CCPA request process on the other hand is very smooth and automated. Though doesn't seem like it's including Work Number information: https://myprivacy.equifax.com/
Indeed, the website will NOT save the data that you entered in the PDF.
In fact neither the data you enter nor the PDF that gets loaded is ever seen by my server: everything happens locally (including the actual PDF generation) [1]
Privacy is one of the key distinctive feature of simplePDF
—
The only thing that is saved is a fingerprint of the document that allows to match the field types and their respective positions (x,y, type of field, width, height…)
4. Because the document fingerprint is “known”, the field types and positions are automatically retrieved from the server
[1] You may notice that after a browser refresh the data you entered is still there: that’s because it’s saved locally in the local storage of your web browser
—
Unrelated: some people have reported that the save button is not displayed in some cases: trying refreshing the page – I’ll work on a fix as soon as possible
This isn't working quite right for me (Firefox on Windows). The SSN field is a single text box and the numbers don't line up with the boxes on the form. I can pad with a single space, but additional spaces don't increase the padding.
I don't get it. how is "PDF shows the name of the employee that created it and that they used Word 2010" relevant to the claim that "extra friction is probably a feature"?
Just speculating here, but I wonder if their point is that they went out of their way to create a PDF that is as unusable as possible, and that Word 2010 is somehow required to create such a PDF.
A few simpler explanations:
- Equifax IT hasn't rolled out modern O365 apps
- The form was created a long time ago, and has not been updated
Regardless of the exif data, I do believe that friction is absolutely a feature in this process, but I also think the Word 2010 angle is tenuous at best.
I've worked on these kinds of systems, but not this one explicitly. There is always a discussion about how to make it(legally) more difficult for users to do something you don't want them to do. It's not paranoia, it's reality.
No angle or point with that comment. Just interesting! I like looking at exif data. And I think there should be more awareness around what it often leaks.
Credit, bank checking (ChexSystems), and personal information aggregators like Lexis Nexis and Thomson Reuters Clear ought to be abolished or curbed indeed. I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now. However we are a class of people whose sexuality can be unfairly identified by these databases.
> I hate to bring trans politics into this. I'm sure that's the last thing anybody wants to hear about right now.
It bothers me sometimes if other people do that, it does not bother me at all if actual trans people want to talk about it. Thank you for sharing, that angle didn't occur to me.
Is the issue 'just' that they misgender trans people? That alone is already shitty of course. Or is the issue also that it makes later 'verification' by these agencies more difficult if the recorded gender does not match the apparent gender of the person?
The issue is that they have a field for prior names/AKA/aliases, and it's typically immutable. You can watch a person's face change as they read the report.
Whose face to you mean? The person being deadnamed, or the person reading the list of names and realizing the person opposite them is trans?
It seems to me that, for the purposes of understanding your legal history it makes sense to keep track of someone's deadname at such an agency. If someone accrued massive debt (or massive positive credit) under their deadname, then that still reflects on them. It sucks to have it recorded that one is trans, or to hear a deadname, but I don't see how it can be avoided.
Like the polite banker opening a checking account for me, or please see my other reply with anecdotes. It does also hurt for me to see that deadname and my thanks for knowing that term.
It is not one's legal history. It's a monster of a private industry trying to justify its own existence, which the world turned without for the longest time. There are many other ways that these reports have harmed non-trans people with false or outdated information.
If someone accrues massive debt, that's the bank's problem, to recover in collections, the court or with the sheriff, and not by giving someone a virtual scarlet letter. Maybe they shouldn't play this massive game of easy, crippling credit, points and cashback rewards. As to massive positive credit, I couldn't care less whether I have their favor.
> Like the banker opening a checking account for me who commented "OK, we can move past that," or please see my other reply with anecdotes. It also hurts for me to see that deadname and my thanks for knowing that term.
I don't see what the issue is. The fact that you previously used that name is a piece of factual information about you. Should anyone be allowed to suppress factual information about themselves because they're uncomfortable with it? eg. "10 years ago I racked up enormous amounts of debt. I'm shameful of that. Being reminded of that hurts me. I would like that information to be expunged."
>There are many other ways that these reports have harmed non-transgender people with false, misleading or outdated information.
This isn't really a convincing argument. You can make the same argument for the internet, ie. "there are many other ways that the internet has harmed non-transgender people with false, misleading or outdated information, we should ban it". What about the advantages? ie. banks being able to accurately assess risk, and reliable borrowers not having to pay for the credit risk of unreliable borrowers?
>If someone accrues massive debt, that's the bank's problem, to recover in collections, the court or with the sheriff, and not by giving someone a virtual scarlet letter.
If someone accrues massive debt and refuses to pay it, don't you think it's fair for the lender to tell other people of the experience?
> Should anyone be allowed to suppress factual information about themselves because they're uncomfortable with it?
Just because it's factual that I caught gonorrhoea from a prostitute while on holiday in Thailand, doesn't mean Equifax has a right to tell my boss, my landlord, and half a dozen russian hackers about it.
>Just because it's factual that I caught gonorrhoea from a prostitute while on holiday in Thailand
that seems to be an entirely different issue because the information is privileged/confidential. For the purposes of this argument I'll concede that information obtained under confidence shouldn't be able to be disseminated. That said, I can't really imagine "you didn't pay your debts" to be in the same category of secrecy as "caught gonorrhoea from a prostitute". That's even more true for something as public as your name.
Debt is created by the lender to make a profit. Saying that somebody's credit history is inherently public is the same as saying their work performance history is inherently public. Nobody is forcing lenders to make loans, quite the opposite; in fact there is a great deal of statutory law preventing predatory lenders (ie deliberately lending to those who can't repay) and the megabanks addiction to junk like car loans is also evidence of the rapacious appetite for lending.
Thus, credit history is for the lenders and by the lenders, all with the purpose of maximizing revenue for the lenders. How one concludes that permanent credit history is some burden all citizenry has to bear for their lifetime is beyond me.
Should anyone be allowed to suppress factual information about themselves because they're uncomfortable with it? eg. "10 years ago I racked up enormous amounts of debt. I'm shameful of that. Being reminded of that hurts me. I would like that information to be expunged."
Actually yes, given sufficient elapsed time. People change a lot over ten years.
If this helps, me and my team use LX and some product from TR and for our purposes sex by itself is not a strong driver for anything. That said, I absolutely agree with your initial statement. There is way too much information available just from those two sources and those should be restricted as much as possible.
As other users noted, I have personally zero issue when it is an individual case ( my personal misgivings start somewhere where it moves to a political wedge issue ).
Out of curiosity, what happens if you use a free credit card e.g Barclays? Does living in the EU zone protect you? Do they have access to your bank account information?
I'm not familiar with the Barclay card. MasterCard has a service called True Name that lets you put whatever you want on your card. It's proprietary but I don't know if they keep it between the two of you. European countries have much stronger privacy protections, though they might have social security numbers which contain sex as an even/odd digit, and it's difficult to change. Checking account numbers are listed in these systems. Banks guard client account line items closely, although in the US the government has blanket access without a warrant.
As a US citizen living in the EU. They don’t give two fucks where you live and will happily tell anyone anything that has your social security number. I’ve thought about trying to complain to them about the GDPR… but anyway, if you have a non-US card, the US credit checks won’t register it because the non-US banks don’t report it, even though they know you’re a US citizen. We have a non-US Mastercard and Amex, and they aren’t on our US credit reports. In fact, we no longer have any US debt but our credit scores are less than 500 for paying it all off. It may literally be impossible to move back and have the same quality of life we did when we moved away. Might just stay here forever.
> However we are a class of people whose sexuality can be unfairly identified by these databases.
Good perspective and thanks for sharing it. I am curious about your choice of words though. You said "sexuality" and not "gender identity". Is there some reason why? I've always thought of the term sexuality to be how you feel about others. Or is that what you meant here?
Gender identity falls under the umbrella of sexuality. I use less-polite terms to remind people that it's the most excruciatingly private details of my life on some bullshit report. One time while applying for an apartment, a boomer broker sarcastically exclaimed, "Well, THAT'S a valid life choice!" to me. Last year I encountered a professional whose mind was blown by this information and asked me if I've had surgery. It's wrong that this is at the mercy of a newish industry that exists to track individuals' merit in make-believe points.
You can't attack other users like that here, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it again.
Also: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We also ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for, because it destroys the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but we need you to be aware of this rule and stop that pattern. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
I just restated what the user themselves admitted. I don't believe that qualifies as an attack.
Ideological debates are more likely to get someone to login to respond anyway. And throwaway accounts exist because holding a controversial opinion gets you downvoted automatically. If your intention is to shut down any kind of debate, curious conversation just won't exist here at all.
The intention is not to "shut down any kind of debate". This is about comment quality. Your comment was obviously below the bar—it was rude, personal, and added zero information. Please don't post like that here—we're trying for a different kind of conversation.
Btw, repeating someone else's self-deprecating remark can absolutely be a form of personal attack; especially if you then pile on, as your comment did. That's not nice at all.
The current oligopoly of the big three credit bureaus is a travesty and needs substantial reform.
That being said, abolishing the concept of a consumer credit report entirely is a terrible idea. It is a fact that different people simply present different risks to a lender in their likelihood of default. Having actual data about a person's previous repayment history is extremely predictive of their future default probability (with proper ML applied).
If you remove the ability to use data about that actual person's previous behavior then instead lenders will simply not provide credit or financial services to large proportions of the population whom might be credit worthy as they would be unable to determine if they are creditworthy.
Again, I'm not arguing for the status quo. A lot of reform is needed. But to ignore the reality of how credit underwriting works is foolish. One of the reasons that many developing countries don't have financial services for their populations to access debt is because they don't have sufficient data to do credit underwriting.
And debt is a critical tool to enable investment in the present. Used wisely, debt enables a person to borrow from the future to invest in the present, e.g. buying a car so they can commute to a nearby city and earn a higher salary.
>That being said, abolishing the concept of a consumer credit report entirely is a terrible idea. It is a fact that different people simply present different risks to a lender in their likelihood of default.
And any bank will ascertain this from their forms when applying for a loan well before they do any kind of credit check on you.
Also, YOU should control your credit history. You can give it to a lender if you wish to prove your credit worthiness. They shouldn't be allowed to give it to anyone else. Organizations should not be allowed to track it unsolicited.
Credit scores were invented in the 1950s. I’d estimate that the US financial system has improved substantially since then, in both absolute and relative terms.
“In 1956, engineer Bill Fair teamed up with mathematician Earl Isaac to create Fair, Isaac and Company, with the goal of creating a standardized, impartial credit scoring system. Within two years, they had begun selling their first credit scoring system.”
You might recognize the names Fair and Isaac as the F and I in FICO.
Yes, but probably by being much more conservative and relying on the branch managers to have a close working relationship, or long standing banking relationship with the people seeking credit.
When that gets more automated - i.e. giving credit to somebody you've never met, then a centralized automated system for verifying trustworthiness is also needed to compensate.
It may even have the net effect of allowing some people to get credit that never could before, so swings and roundabouts I guess.
Bank of America was founded in 1904 -- well before credit scores became a thing -- to provide banking services to Italian-Americans, who could not usually obtain service from other banks due to ethnic discrimination.
It's also worth noting that banks couldn't operate across state lines until sometime in the 80s, so it wasn't unusual to see a lot of different smaller banks.
When does that ever happen? Lending and borrowing are always at the root of every economic crisis. National debt of countries are already astronomically large and will only keep growing.
Just abolish credit as well. If it means the economy will grow slower, so be it.
>If it means the economy will grow slower, so be it.
This is easy for someone to say who already lives a comfortable life.
Credit is simply a more efficient use of wealth. Without credit, money stored is money that is unused, and thus money denied to everyone else. Everyone is poorer as a result because you have millions of people willing to exchange their goods and services but are blocked because they lack a medium of exchange that is being hoarded by the wealthy.
And with credit, money lent out is money that doesn't actually exist until made real by repayment which must come from extracting value from this planet at ever increasing unsustainable rates, and there's always the risk it won't ever be realized at all in case of defaults. Credit creates money out of nowhere, effectively imposing a tax on everyone and making them poorer so that banks can extract profits. The massive amounts of debt people go into effectively enslaves them forever. Nowhere is this clearer than the student loans scam which not only lures unsuspecting victims into signing up for hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt they might not ever be able to pay off but also drives up the price of tuition and lowers academic integrity precisely because it's trillions of easy government money being injected into the economy.
Efficient use of capital? That's exactly what the banks and investment firms said about stuff like highly leveraged derivatives and the CDOs and all the stuff that caused the 2008 crisis. Bad loans was literally the source of it all. We all know who paid the price for all that and who got to keep their fortunes.
Who said anything about stopping the economy? It will keep going just fine.
I am a third worlder, by the way. My father taught me not to be indebted to anyone, a principle he himself holds to this day and a major reason for whatever prosperity my family managed to achieve.
Do you think we can remove all debt without stopping the economy? That’s simply not how business works.
IOU’s are the oil that grease the economic machine.
Personal debt, when used wisely, can supercharge a life. Buying that first car, a house, going to uni. It can change the trajectory of the person for the better. Debt-fueled investments like startups and property improvements are another example.
How could it not grease the economy? It's literally money conjured up from thin air. Would be weird if it didn't.
It's an illusion. Until loans get repaid they're just inflating the money supply. Can't get a job after college in order to pay $200k in student loans? Lost the job? People literally end up homeless or worse.
That's like saying gambling on futures with 100x leverage can supercharge a life. Yeah, I'll get rich alright if the market moves favorably to my position. Alternatively I'll get liquidated and lose everything.
Debt is necessary to invest if you don’t have sufficient savings. To say that we can do away with debt is the opinion of someone who both:
- already has a good stash of resources, and
- is incapable of seeing the point of view of a poor person.
Also, all debt is very much not magic money. Most debt represents very real, hard value. Businesses routinely provide goods and services to each other with 90 or even 180 days to pay.
You’re confusing all debt with speculation and irresponsible borrowing.
If some Americans want to borrow $200k to study an arts degree, does that mean all debt is evil?
If somebody somewhere overeats, does this mean humanity should swear off calories?
> Debt is necessary to invest if you don’t have sufficient savings.
If you don't have savings, you accumulate. Much easier to do without a mountain of debt weighing you down. Seriously thought that was the accepted wisdom, especially if you're poor. Apparently not.
> Also, all debt is very much not magic money. Most debt represents very real, hard value. Businesses routinely provide goods and services to each other with 90 or even 180 days to pay.
And what happens when one of those persons or businesses goes bankrupt? All that very real, hard value just disappears. It goes away. Doesn't get paid. Defaults.
> You’re confusing all debt with speculation and irresponsible borrowing.
If you go into debt, you are speculating. That's a fact. You're betting that you're going to be able to pay later. Whoever is extending credit to you is taking a risk. Obviously that's a calculated gamble since any number of things could happen that make it impossible for you to pay. Absolutely no confusion here.
>And with credit, money lent out is money that doesn't actually exist until made real by repayment which must come from extracting value from this planet at ever increasing unsustainable rates.
You couldn't be more wrong here. Credit creates new money. The money doesn't get destroyed again until either the credit gets paid off or the lender defaults.
The Earth's resources don't magically spring into the air when someone takes a loan. If consumption is indeed unsustainable, it's because that's what people want. Industrialization is what's destroying the earth, people who lived in countries with bad economics like the Soviet Union wanted to industrialize just as much as capitalist nations, if not more so. They drained half the Aral Sea just to provide their textile factories with cotton. It just happened that they were so bad at industrializing that they polluted and consumed less. People caring about the environment is only possible in world with enough surplus to worry about it.
>Credit creates money out of nowhere, effectively imposing a tax on everyone and making them poorer so that banks can extract profits
Again, complete nonsense. Alice takes a loan for Bob to build a home. The value of the money created with the loan comes from the new home that Bob built. Banks aren't extracting profits from diluted money, they get paid for providing financial services. Sometimes, they offer financial services for bullshit, but just means that the government should implement better policy.
> You couldn't be more wrong here. Credit creates new money. The money doesn't get destroyed again until either the credit gets paid off or the lender defaults.
That is exactly what I said. This new money doesn't actually exist. It's backed by nothing until someone creates real value and repays the loan.
> The Earth's resources don't magically spring into the air when someone takes a loan.
Of course not. People work to extract as much value as possible. Exponential growth.
> If consumption is indeed unsustainable, it's because that's what people want.
Who doesn't want to grow expontentially? My whole point is it's not sustainable.
> Again, complete nonsense. Alice takes a loan for Bob to build a home. The value of the money created with the loan comes from the new home that Bob built. Banks aren't extracting profits from diluted money, they get paid for providing financial services.
Alice takes out a loan at the bank. Alice pays Bob for services. Bob deposits money at bank. That same money is loaned out again. Eventually it makes its way back to the bank again. And gets loaned out again. And on and on.
In this manner $100 easily turns into $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000. Fake money that doesn't exist until all of those loans are repaid in full. And in order to repay, things need to happen, businesses need to be started, value needs to be created, money needs to be made, the economy must grow exponentially, and in doing so it creates even more loans which creates even more fake money driving even more growth. If the music ever stops for any reason, it's all over.
I and probably you are probably working in arrears for our employers. That is, we don't get paid until after the work is done. That is extending our employers a credit line. The same applies for rent, for utilities, for phone data, for taxes...
Credit is at the root of every economic crisis because credit is money.
Hell, taking items from a store's shelves up to their counter is, in a sense, the store extending you credit. Handing over cash so as for the cashier to open a glass case to retrieve an item, vice versa.
There are certain baseline levels of social trust that we tend to take for granted. Easy, too, to overlook that they are easily violated and not universal.
I get paid as soon as my work is done. Sometimes literally and in physical cash. I'm working on transitioning to getting paid for my time before people even enter my office.
Credit is money, but it shouldn't be. We allowed it to become money and it's the reason for so much of the insanity we face today.
I'm going to guess that either you already own your home and your car outright, or that you're renting something somewhere and don't own a car. Or you're wealthy to the point of being able to pay cash or make major purchases without having to save for a while.
In any case, you're already comfortable. You already have what you need. So it's easy to be against the things that would help people slightly less fortunate than you.
Credit is a necessity. For me to save up the money to buy the house I'm in today would literally take me 20 years, because not only would I need to be setting aside $2,000/month, but would also need to still be paying rent at wherever I was. Credit allows me to buy the house NOW and start building equity NOW. Yes, I acknowledge I'll spend a few extra thousand for the privilege, but it's worth it.
Same with a car. If I need a car to get to work, I can't save for 3+ years while paying for Lyft every day if I live too far from work to take a bike or live in a climate where riding a bike is excruciating.
That said, I concede that predatory lending exists. I don't think adjustable rate mortgages should have ever existed. Student loans were a good idea (Provide a way for any qualified person to attend college regardless of current financial status), but ended up with disastrous side effects (Tuition hikes to extract more money, reduced government investment into colleges since students are more able to foot the bill).
I also concede that some people are bad with money. They'll get loans they can't afford and buy everything on credit with no hope of paying it off. They rent things from Rent-A-Center, which is incredibly predatory.
But to argue for the abolishment of credit because some people suck at it is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would absolutely destroy the middle class and kneecap upward mobility of the lower class.
> I'm going to guess that either you already own your home and your car outright
Partially correct.
Yes, I own my car. While I was in school my family bought the cheapest used vehicle there was so that I could go to classes. After I graduated, I continued using that car until I had made more than enough money to buy a new one. I have friends who took on massive amounts of debt in order to have luxurious vehicles right after graduation. I will never do something like that.
Yes, my family owns their homes. Both my parents worked jobs while renting an apartment until they had enough to buy the home I grew up in and in which they live in to this day. It took a lot of effort.
Yes, my education was fully paid for in advance. My parents prepared and planned for it since the day I was born. My father showed me his careful accounting on his ledger, entries dating back decades.
> Or you're wealthy to the point of being able to pay cash or make major purchases without having to save for a while.
Wealthy enough to pay cash? I guess. Without any planning and saving? No.
> Credit allows me to buy the house NOW and start building equity NOW.
What did you really buy? Fail to make your payments and see the true owners of your house take it away from you. None of it is real until the payments are done.
> Student loans were a good idea, but ended up with disastrous side effects
Of course. That about sums up the entire history of credit and debt. A great idea that destroys everything.
> But to argue for the abolishment of credit because some people suck at it is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> It would absolutely destroy the middle class and kneecap upward mobility of the lower class.
On the contrary. Credit and lending are literally responsible for global economic collapse. It destroys the lives of so many it's not even funny.
> Fail to make your payments and see the true owners of your house take it away from you.
The notion that the collateral for a loan could be repossessed because of non-payment is not convincing.
I still own the house. I can make decisions regarding modifications to it without seeking permission from the bank that loaned the money to me, even if such modifications would lower the value.
> Credit and lending are literally responsible for global economic collapse. It destroys the lives of so many it's not even funny.
No, bad credit and lending are responsible. Sub-prime mortgages, ARMs, and "balloon" mortgages.
In your fantasy world where credit no longer exists, home ownership would drop considerably. Very few people would be able to save the money to buy a home because they would have to pay rent while saving up the money. When I bought my house in 2015, I was paying about $1,000/month for rent. The house I bought is costing me $1,500/month for 30 years ($320K @ 3.85%).
Obviously, that $1,500/month includes interest. A lot of it. So let's assume instead I'm saving money and living in that apartment still. Assume that I'm risk-averse and don't invest my money. At $1,500/month, it would take me 18 years of saving to buy that house
Oh, but home prices are almost always going up. The $338K house (I put $18K down, and most of that was a gift from my in-laws) I'm in is currently worth $550K. It would take 30 years of saving to buy this house at that price.
And the worst part is, the entire time, I'm still paying rent somewhere. And that rent is always going up as well! I would need to have a very considerable amount of disposable income in order to save up to buy a house! In 2015, I could afford a $1,500 mortgage. I could NOT afford to pay $1,000/month in rent AND set aside $1,500/month for a house in the future!
So...you'd significantly reduce how many people could buy a house. You'd think "Well, the lower demand would lower prices!", but that's probably wrong. What would happen is that real estate investors would buy up the houses. The big banks already have the cash on hand. They buy them up, rent them out, and further lock people out of homeownership.
Wealth inequality grows, and the economy suffers. The rich get richer as they extract money via rent, building more wealth to buy more houses to rent out.
Your parents were able to buy a house while home prices relative to wages were better. Good on them. But to eliminate the idea of credit now would be a real "I got mine" move.
To do that they create massive inflation and risk which they try to mitigate by implementing the financial equivalent of global mass surveillance. They'd rather commit any atrocity than accept a loss on their risky investment.
Credit is a tool - one that is needed to keep economic systems working correctly. Depressions don't occur when financial systems pull back - Depressions occur when access to financial capital via credit dries up.
That said, as a tool, it is often mis-used (virtually anything that starts with a credit card is in this category).
Things were bad, or worse, before they existed. Every little town had one (I remember walking past Palo Alto’s downtown; it was just a storefront with a bunch of file cabinets). Getting credit was slow and complicated and really a pain when you moved.
And before that, even into the mid 20th century, getting credit was all about your network. And remember how much people complain about VCs relying on intros rather than cold calls…well that’s how the entire financial system used to work.
Yes the credit agencies are abusive and lazy and need serious reform and legal management, but they also provide valuable services. I believe it is possible to have the latter and fix the former.
Check if an ad blocker might be interfering? I finished my CCPA request in ~2 minutes and it only required that I do SMS verification. Presumably because the name, phone, address, and email all matched records they had on file for me...
There’s a special caliber of crappy site that only functions when ad-blocking is enabled.
My working theory is that the sites are so bad, they rely on the ads to provide their dependencies as global. Block the ads and you’ve blocked the ancient version jquery the main site needs loaded of function.
At least some adblockers work on keywords. I once made an api call called 'track' that got blocked as a tracker. It was for the pathway you were on after choosing something on that page. I had to rename it to get it to work properly.
It didn't matter that it was an api for that domain. It didn't matter that it had nothing to do with Google ads. It certainly wasn't on any list unless they were adding all newly registered domains to it.
You can contact a consumer law attorney to get this fixed. There is an attorney's fees provision in the FCRA which will make it economical to pursue the remedy.
Depends. Do they have EU citizens in their database? GDPR is an EU law that applies to EU citizens around the world, including the US. If you are a non-EU citizen, you can't claim GDPR of course. If you are an EU citizen, you can claim GDPR regardless of the residence of the company AFAIK.
Enforcement of GDPR is a different matter. I am not sure whom I'd complain to, other than my representative in the European parliament. I could probably sue them though, if I found my data there and they refused to comply with my GDPR request.
> that applies to EU citizens around the world, including the US
No. To give a counterexample, there are EU citizens in China, and most internet companies in China don't care a fvck about GDPR, especially Tencent. You bet your conversations on WeChat are logged, sometimes subjected to censorship, and more, it's just how things work. Heck, there are even laws in China that are fully contradictory to GDPR, and the local laws take precedence, regardless of what citizenship you have, if you are physically within the borders you are subject to local laws.
The US isn't any different from China here. The EU doesn't get to enforce its laws in China, and it doesn't get to enforce its laws in the US. They aren't the world police.
That said, I'm not saying GDPR is bad, just that the US needs to have its own version of it in US law. What is bad is letting the EU enforce laws outside their borders. China doesn't, and neither should the US.
GDPR works the opposite of how you think it does. EU residents can claim rights under GDPR regardless of citizenship, and EU citizens in other countries are granted no protections. (I'm not sure about how it works for people whose location is transient, e.g. people on vacations.)
Companies outside of the EU can become subject to GDPR by targeting EU residents. You can always raise a complaint to the data privacy regulator for the EU country where you currently reside, and GDPR has a mechanism to forward that to the relevant authority.
And in certain capitalist societies, the capital decides the laws and allocation of resources.
At least in theory, in a democratic society, government should be elected by the people. Unfortunately there never was a democratic, socialist country, so it's hard to make statements based on observation with these matters.
There were many democratic socialist countries, unfortunately socialism devolves into tyranny in less than one election period. For example Czechoslovakia voted for communism freely by its own volition in 1946, and the communists started killing people the same year. It's not an individual's fault - many new unknown people started ruthlessly competing for absolute power as soon as it became available. Similar process happened in the entire Eastern Bloc.
This is more or less what Brazil is doing, but they voted for a (luckily incompetent) proto-dictator to prevent the danger of "communism" (as in "voting for a center-left party" communism).
Democracy only works well with a well informed electorate. This is why we need to fight the diffusion of propaganda disguised as news.
If killing people is your bar for descending into tyranny then capitalism is guilty of the same thing. The whiskey rebellion happened in the US shortly after it’s formation and that was over paying taxes to the capitalist state. You also had the various government slaughters of workers striking whenever they tried to get a better deal from their employers
I'm not advocating for capitalism, I'm just against socialism/communism because it fatally corrupts people's minds - watching local movies from this era is painful, as you can see the horrific distortions it imposed on the people from above. I mean stuff like parents teaching children to never stand out, never excel, never strive for more, never be different - in a panic try to protect them from state-mandated harm.
Depends on your definition of success.If one is Thinking of the long-term viability of the human race then capitalism can only be seen as a disaster if you look at it from a ecological perspective.
Capitalism doesn't happen without state and it is defined by the state, so it's a failure of state regulation, not capitalism itself. States must set different regulation and/or incentives. It's perfectly possible to have 100% ecological capitalism.
Capitalism is the engine behind the pay-to-play nature of the political processes and the supporting propaganda that triggers those failures.
You cant separate capitalism from, for example, the decades of amplified Koch propaganda attacking environmental regulatory prudence and buying up politicians. The Kochs respond to incentives just like everybody else.
>It's perfectly possible to have 100% ecological capitalism.
Only with a shallow and one dimensional view of what capitalism really is and how a state actually functions.
It's not a feelings based assumption, it's the role of liberal democratic states determined by the basic principles of democracy. That the states do not fulfill their role is their own fault.
The Equifax CCPA request process on the other hand is very smooth and automated. Though doesn't seem like it's including Work Number information: https://myprivacy.equifax.com/