HR Departments Tell Equifax Your Entire Salary History

chiguy writes with this snippet From NBC News: "The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of human resource departments around the country, has assembled...[a database]...containing 190 million employment and salary records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults...[Equifax] says [it] is adding 12 million records annually.' This salary information is for sale: "Its database is so detailed that it contains week-by-week paystub information dating back years for many individuals, as well as ... health care provider, whether someone has dental insurance and if they've ever filed an unemployment claim.""

Great!

[HeckRuler]

How soon can I browse the salary history of CEO's, Congressmen, the chairmen of the FED, the leaders of Scientology, and the lobbyists on capitol hill?

Inaccuracy is a big problem

[Atrox Canis]

After spending over a year on a mission to get my credit report "fixed", I have a number of anecdotal stories regarding the inherent inaccuracy of the reporting that goes into these databases. My credit reports were not that bad but after a review of the report from the top three agencies, I discovered dozens of factually inaccurate items ranging from wrong addresses to poorly formatted history items. My reports contained input from companies I had never done business with and companies that no longer existed. The problem with this is that if they can't be trusted to confirm the proper spelling of your name, how can they be the "authoritative" source for detailed information regarding your trustworthiness.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as some group breaches Equifax's system? I'd imagine that this will happen shortly as long as this story gets enough publicity.

Horribly Unfair

[realsilly]

Just this week, in the paper, I read that one senator is proposing a bill to allow employees to freely and openly discuss their pay. But here we read that this information is simply handed over to credit agencies. These credit agencies can then basically sell your information to Credit Card companies, Banks and more.

So it really begs the question, why am I not allowed to openly discuss my salary information but HR can hand it out to a Credit agency where from there it can be sold to half the corporations in America?

Our government really does not care about it's citizens any longer, only which corporations donate the most to their campaigns. /sigh

Ponder that, though

[smittyoneeach]

As our political class increasingly becomes an aristocracy, this sort of thing becomes a weapon to keep the peasants out.
Once you're a made member of the club, scrubbing your data and enjoying some privacy is a perq.

Re:Inaccuracy is a big problem

[DarkOx]

What would be more interesting is you can prove the debts are not her own and pursue a successful libel case against them. A few of those with some considerable damage award is about the only thing that will drive these 'agencies' to fix their quality issues.

Some countries make all tax returns public...

[acidfast7]

... why demand the secrecy? Why not adopt a Nordic-style openness that shows who pays what taxes and where the taxes actually go. I also appreciated my annual credit history/report that was automatically mailed to my address when I lived in Stockholm. Why do you guys have to make everything so complicated? There's no security through obscurity.

Re:Inaccuracy is a big problem

[biodata]

I wonder what happens to the credit ratings of people who sue credit rating agencies.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big trouble?, they can ruin the economy and not get in BIG trouble

And cash is still king...

[ducomputergeek]

I had bad experiences with credit in my early 20's. Not ashamed to admit it. The more I got to learning about how the credit system works the more I was boggled at how bad it really was and was bound and determined to get out of it by my 30's. So I spent a lot of time in my mid and late 20's with a start up that I eventually sold for a fair amount of money. It wasn't millions, but enough to pay off my debts, buy a condo that I rehabbed and then got luck to flip for a good profit, and then I bought the farm next to my Dad's.

Now I pay cash for everything. If I need a car, I try to find a good used one (although thanks to cash for clunkers there aren't a lot out there. My 2004 Chevy Impala with 130k miles could fetch way more than it's worth at the moment).

After buying the farm, I didn't have enough to buy another place so I decided to rent a loft. Walked in and they all their "credit" requirements. I asked them to figure out the amount of the lease and I'd go right to the bank and get a cashiers check for the full amount up front. Amazing how they no longer needed to run my credit.

Last year I created an LLC for my part time business of going to estate sales and then dealing in antique and vintage furniture. Went to see about credit card processing from the bank and a couple days later got a call back stating that they had a problem: there wasn't any credit records for me. I smiled, said don't worry about it and opened a square account.

Re:Great!

[pla]

I work there 6 consecutive years. In that time I increase revenue by 300%, stock price doubles, everyones happy, and I even got a boost to 1.9M 18 months ago. I've now established that I'm not only good at what I do

Now let's look at reality. The last CEO got caught tapping the mayor's wife (take that as you will) and the company had to write down a $20M golden parachute to get rid of him. The payoff almost zeroed out revenue for the year, and the scandal dropped the company's stock price by half.

You came on as a hired gun to make some nasty changes and take the heat off the "real" next CEO. You outsource the only employment within 100 miles of a small town in Nebraska, to Bangalore. Over the next five years, the stock price and revenue recover back to normal. In the sixth year, you announce plans to destroy another small town, and step down when the PR backlash gets too intense. The company officially denounces you, but you have your choice of three positions already lined up to do the exact same thing.

Sorry, but no CEO can boost revenue by 300% through anything even remotely creditable as "skill". A really good CEO might sustain 10% "real" growth on average, in a good economy. When you see BS numbers like that, it just screams "bookkeeping games".


/ Bernie Madoff reported near-legendary gains of a mere 11% per year for an equally amazing decade and a half. He should have just hired you for six months, eh?

Re:Privacy And Sin

[whitroth]

Um, sorry, not true. The current libertarianism is from the seventies, I believe. The earlier libertarians were *LEFT* wing, and friends of the IWW (and I have an old pamphlet my father picked up in the early fifties to prove it).

The current libertarians, of course, fall into my aphorism: there are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires, and suckers. I suggest that if you're a libertarian and posting here, you're the latter.

            mark