Credit Scores

Lately, I've been seeing a large number of credit score ads on TV where they try and convince people that they need regular and up to date info on their credit scores. This bugs me.

The credit score system, for good or bad, is set up with a variety of things geared for the most part to determine an individual's or organization's credit trustworthiness when determining whether or not to grant credit, and at what rates. They also have a few bonus features that not all people are aware of. First is that it holds a collection of your credit histories, including where you have made purchases, what your holdings are in a given country and your spending habits. They also have all of your primary identification listings, which can be used to copy an identity perfectly.

Now the big credit companies, Transunion and Equifax in Canada, and again fro good or bad, have a fair amount of scrutiny on the security of the data they hold, which is about as complete a picture as you can paint on most people. Which brings us to where I am heading.

The free credit score companies are actually data aggregators, otherwise known as data mining companies. What they do is obtain whatever info they can possibly assemble on individuals and sell the data off to advertisers, insurers and anyone else who is looking for a certain level of data...of which there are many. By requesting a score from these companies, people are granting access to these companies for their complete credit profiles. What's worse, is that these companies have significantly less oversight than the actual credit companies, and a data breach would result in significant risk of identity theft for anyone who has data stored with them. It gets even more problematic, as these data miners sell of your data to even other organizations, leading to a greater loss of control over the security of your personal information.

The worst part is that free credit scores can be requested, usually for free once per year by the major credit agencies in most countries.

Blog post is courtesy Elemental Investigations: Private Investigator Edmonton, an Edmonton, Canada based private investigator agency. They can be found online at www.elementalpi.ca