If you want to use credit, you have to let lenders collaborate to determine whether they're willing to lend to you, if that's their criteria for making decisions.
If you don't want to use credit, they get no special pass to store and use personal data about you.
I'm from Europe, where generally personal privacy gets more emphasis than it seems to in some places, notably the US. We have explicit laws about collecting and processing personal data, but certain organisations seem to get a free pass for no apparent reason. As this story demonstrates, the risks are still there.
That said, perhaps we shouldn't be too worried. The last time I paid a little real money to get hold of my personal credit report from one of these credit reporting organisations, it was so riddled with obvious errors, including more than a few wildly inaccurate data points, that I was on the phone to them for something like half an hour to get them to correct everything. At that point (I kid you not) the woman on the phone asked if I would be much longer because it was the end of the day and time for her to go home.
I'm convinced that those 'errors' on reports are actually phishing.
When I ordered my reports I paid with postal orders, so as not to leak any financial information back to the agencies. I'm glad I did so, as the details ( other than my mortgage ) were laughably incorrect.
I was on the verge of writing to correct them and then caught myself - that's exactly what they want, isn't it? So hopefully by now they've diverged even further from the truth.
Were they negative elements or just factually incorrect neutral/positive elements? Correct or not, if your credit report is pulled and there is wildly inaccurate (negative) information you can still be declined, and not many people know that you are entitled to a free report if you're declined based on what's in that report.
In my experience, most every place that declines you based on report data will send you a letter saying (in very general terms, but still) what criterion you failed, as well as the information about where to get your report.
If you want to use credit, you have to let lenders collaborate to determine whether they're willing to lend to you, if that's their criteria for making decisions.
If you don't want to use credit, they get no special pass to store and use personal data about you.
I'm from Europe, where generally personal privacy gets more emphasis than it seems to in some places, notably the US. We have explicit laws about collecting and processing personal data, but certain organisations seem to get a free pass for no apparent reason. As this story demonstrates, the risks are still there.
That said, perhaps we shouldn't be too worried. The last time I paid a little real money to get hold of my personal credit report from one of these credit reporting organisations, it was so riddled with obvious errors, including more than a few wildly inaccurate data points, that I was on the phone to them for something like half an hour to get them to correct everything. At that point (I kid you not) the woman on the phone asked if I would be much longer because it was the end of the day and time for her to go home.