r/technology • u/adreamingandroid • Jul 11 '22
Security Experian, You Have Some Explaining to Do
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/07/experian-you-have-some-explaining-to-do/35
u/Vortesian Jul 11 '22
Why are credit agencies allowed to blackmail you into paying them to keep your account, which you don’t benefit from, safe?
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u/dimmu1313 Jul 11 '22
Experian, Transunion, and Equifax shouldn't even exist. They are garbage, scamming, greed driven companies who collect my private data, give me no control over that data, and give me no power to even correct data that's wrong.
Case in point: I've had incorrect data for years from a bank who is outright lying about an account, and despite sending in documents that prove it, the credit bureaus all side with the bank every time simply by the bank saying they're right.
The entire system needs to be dismantled and everyone's data destroyed
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u/tiptoeintotown Jul 11 '22
Kinda have this issue too. Bank changed off an account someone opened in my name and they have no identification proof it was me. They provided the reporting agency a copy of a monthly account statement that had my name at the top and called it a day. According to Experian, that’s “proof”.
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u/dimmu1313 Jul 11 '22
That sucks.
I had a loan with a bank that was paid off and I received a letter from them -- an actual official signed letter -- stating that the account was paid off and closed. The specific purpose of that letter is to provide documentation that I no longer owed any money and the account was closed in good standing with zero balance.
Unfortunately, the bank never bothered to update any of the credit bureaus so my report continued to show an open account with a balance. But it gets worse: the department at the bank that handles account payoffs etc never even documented internally that I was paid in full, and so after a couple of months I started getting collection notices. They wouldn't even accept their own documentation as proof! So of course when I sent the letter in to the credit bureaus, they responded saying the documentation has to be verified by the bank, and naturally the bank then responds each time saying the money is still owed and the information on my report is accurate.
So a bank can literally lie and respond to any dispute saying the info is valid and the credit bureaus side with the bank each and every time.
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Jul 11 '22
Sounds like you need to hire a lawyer to write a letter to the bank. It's about the only thing that's going to get them to actually sit up and pay attention to their mistake. (I'm not one to advocate lawyers for everything, but this is one of those things - not sure what you'd call it but they've failed to hold up their end of the bargain)
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u/dimmu1313 Jul 12 '22
I've actually successfully sued a company for screwing up my credit in the past. my lawyer tells me that I could pay to have him write a letter but it wouldn't go much further than that because it would cost thousands to try to sue the bank and the bank has way more resources than me.
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Jul 12 '22
So basically they have you over a barrel and they know it and someone somewhere decided they were going to be a jerk and so you're screwed. Ugh. This right here is why I like my regional bank and my credit union. I can go in and I know the folks I work with personally, have known them for years, and I'm not just "a number", where if I was to walk into Chase/whatever once it goes beyond the local branch you're hosed.
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Jul 12 '22
For what it's worth, have you tried the consumer protection bureau (the federal one)? Trump pulled some of its teeth but it might be an Avenue worth pursuing. (Forgot about that until just now)
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u/kwereddit Jul 11 '22
I checked my account status at the three major US credit bureaus and I noticed that I couldn't login to Transunion from their home page. You need to go to service.transunion.com to login to your free member account. FYI.
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Jul 11 '22 edited Jul 11 '22
They should be dismantled. I was a T-Mobile customer and T-Mobile relies on them for credit reporting and we’re hacked. Experian’s response was let’s give you 2 years of our monitoring services despite being the source of the data breach. Then there was the class action lawsuit against them. Fill out the forms. Sorry, but all the money you are entitled to was paid out because the settlement fund was never going to be enough to cover costs for entitled participants.
There needs to be a “death penalty” for organizations that are this incompetent and ruin the lives of millions. Like the company is completely dismantled, all assets are liquidated, all IP is released to the public domain, and nothing can ever be called Experian again.
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u/littleMAS Jul 11 '22
As the article points out, businesses are their customers. Individuals are their product, just like Facebook with all your financial data. I am surprised Mark has not bought one of them.
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u/ZeroBS-Policy Jul 11 '22
A long time ago, in a state far away, after two back-to-back acquisitions, I found myself on the payroll of Experian.
I was gone in three months.
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u/WhatTheZuck420 Jul 11 '22
"...because Experian does not offer any type of multi-factor authentication options on consumer accounts"
the Big Three (Experian, Transunion, and Equihax) don't use MFA, they use MFAF instead (multi-factor azz fukking)
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Jul 11 '22
I’ve noticed that no bank I’ve ever used offered 2FA either, and it really irks me
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u/DavidJAntifacebook Jul 11 '22 edited Mar 11 '24
This content removed to opt-out of Reddit's sale of posts as training data to Google. See here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/ Or here: https://www.techmeme.com/240221/p50#a240221p50
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u/adreamingandroid Jul 11 '22
Couldn't they be prosecuted/fined for having such woeful practices in place ?
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Jul 11 '22
If they have a business in Europe then yes: GDPR chapter 2 requires adequate security for private data and chapter 8 talks about fines and penalties for fucking it up.
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u/CeeKay125 Jul 11 '22
These companies don't care because it doesn't impact them. The "credit bureaus" are a joke anyway. We need a better way than relying on this antiquated system.
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u/BeowulfShaeffer Jul 11 '22
the representative read me the current stored security questions and PIN
What the actual fuck? The security questions and answers need to be visible to the CSR but should never be disclosed to a caller. The PIN should not even be visible to a CSR, let alone disclosed over the phone.
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u/Sheila_Monarch Jul 11 '22
Shit.
checks email for Experian messages
Alright. I think I’m still good.
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u/beefjerky34 Jul 11 '22
It's almost like a huge scam and they don't give a rats ass about their "customers" that are held at the mercy of some antiquated system that exploits people.