PSA: no matter what, Equifax may tell you you've been impacted by the hack
I am now believing these guys are not producers, but looters in disguise. They manufactured a system over time that has business addicted to their "credit scores" that profess to be accurate representations of your "trustworthiness" (if so why does someone who pays all their bills on time, never having a bad mark, rate a score of "675", and thus get 18% interest offered to them, because of that score? One would think paying your bills is the one thing a lender needs to know...) Thats same system professed a need for every bit of data you ever had to identify yourself, then they allow their most valuable material to be stolen en masse, and their top 3 executives dump al their stock days before the announcement? Toa dd insult to injury, if you check your "status" it appears dead people, Dumbocrap voters, Russian citizens, and Mickey Mouse, all had their data stolen, so sign up for our free credit monitoring (by a company they, the people who caused the issue, own). The weadd the fact you just unknowingly signed away your right to sue, by agreeing through their use clause, to arbitration only. These guys have got looting tuned to a fine science and make a great companion to the Federal Government....
The industry calls you a "deadbeat". They want you to buy their product, debt. People not purchasing their product is of no interest to them except that they're potential new purchasers.
BTW, I don't hold it against them at all for wanting to sell their product. I don't even care if they make a little game where they size up how favored a customer you are. They're providing a valuable service for willing customers. They're free to make a figure-of-merit game out of promoting their product if they want.
They try to convince people, though, that they have a benchmark for responsible behavior. A much, much better benchmark for good financial management is building wealth for yourself. Actual wealth is infinitely more important than the banking industry's opinion of you as a potential customer.
They collect a fee form merchants in the 3% range and then return half of it to consumers in bonus rewards of some form. The merchant gets to avoid the problems of keeping so much cash on hand. They also get the chance that the consumer will swipe the card and not think as hard as he would turning over hard-earned bills. The bank gets the chance that a consumer who would not walk into a bank and ask for a loan might accidentally find himself in credit card debt.
On our last vacation we took out a wad of cash that we wanted to spend. It made it so easy to watch the bills go down as we came to the end of the vacation. It actually felt like we got more value for our money just by being aware. One merchant gave us a discount. If we had used cards, we would have had to check online or add them up. That would have worked. But cash is so easy. It keeps track of itself. If I had never heard of card payments, it's not a product I would ever have sought out.
The same thing happened to me, except we were living together and had a wedding date next year when I discovered she was running up high-interest debt and lying about it. It was for every assortment of fancy candles, nail polish, etc. I dodged a bullet.
I first looked at their page advertised as telling you if you are affected and found that it required signing up for the "free" monitoring. A few days later at the page for searching the 'dark web' I found links to three long documents on 'privacy policy', 'terms of use' and 'ad tracking', all of which allows them to track you and sell information even if you only look at their web site.
Why would anyone sign up for "free" monitoring when everything they do tracks and sells information about you, the product? Being monitored for "free" is being promoted as a benefit. Everyone run like lemmings to be monitored for "free" on top of what they are already doing. The same company that engages in surveillance is now offering more for free and we're supposed to believe it's something different and we're not the product this time -- "never let a good crises go to waste".
It took them six weeks to publicly admit that private information on over a hundred million people had been exposed, so you didn't even know to watch out for it -- while their top "executives" were selling off stock in advance. We didn't sign up for their "service" or provide them with information, yet they collected it on their own and then exposed it, and don't want to be accountable for it. Now they exploit it to herd the product -- us -- into more surveillance advertised as "free".
The Equifax web site now assures that it "won't happen again" because they have contracted with security experts. Don't they know about barn doors and horses? Do they think that we don't? Why didn't they concern themselves with the security before it happened instead of after?
It seems that they have no concern over exposing data on people at all as long it is they who are doing the exposing by selling it and not hackers who don't pay them for it.
What kind of James Taggart/Orren Boyle cronies go into this line of "work"? "Executives" with no thought of production but who happened to get into the line of "managing" other people for high salaries, stock, and a plush office? The guy who tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge had nothing on these clowns. "Get your free 30 lashes here! Free lashing and beatings! Line up here while it's still free!"
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Installment stuff doesn't affect it much, other than short term hits when a new loan is opened until a good history is established.
[Sarcasm]The best thing to do is get a credit card, pay it down over 12-18 months. Along the way get a car loan. Keep a mortgage the whole time. If you are making a big purchase, borrow the money for it and pay it off. Keep your total debt-servicing payments near 48% of your income and your mortgage payment close to but under 33% of your income. [/Sarcasm]
The sarcastic response is actually true. Using their product will indeed make them like you. BTW, having me design circuit boards for you on a regular basis will raise your "score" with me. What a joke.
I submit the 675 score does not hurt you. It's most important if you're trying to get a poorly collateralized loan. Whether you pay 18% or 10% for a loan with no collateral, it's a bad deal for you anyway. If you're buying a home with 20% down or a commercial property with 40% down, you will get the same rate as someone with a high score. Even if the loan is not collateralized, if the party you're doing business with has a brain and digs in beyond the three-digit score and sees you always pay as agreed, it doesn't matter.
The arbitration clause doesn't matter much, either, because I wouldn't waste my time suing them. Just don't do business with them (unless it's a free benefit). They consider the banking industry their customers. The people they keep track of they call consumers.
As you say, it's pretty close to looting in disguise.
It's hard to escape google scanning your email even without a gmail account because so many others you communicate with use it.
For accessing social media in read-only mode you can set up accounts with no information added, but you will be surprised to see what shows up in ad displays, revealing how they are tracking your connection and merging information. It helps to use a vpn connection and//or the tor browser for some of what you access.
There are a lot of good reasons to seek more privacy on the internet, and a lot of reasons, including good ones, that the FBI doesn't like. The IRS in particular doesn't like private currencies.
The government is carrying on a surveillance war against tor to break it. It's ironic that after the initial computer science networking research it became a project supporting dissidents, international human rights supporters, journalists, etc., funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA.
But all of it comes with a price of experimenting, configuring, and troubleshooting when something you want doesn't work right because some limit is too strict.
My perception is Intel gives top pay and benefits so they can get the best people. It's great they provide it for free. I purposely ignore the bureaus because I think they've worked out what borders on a scam: "We'll provide free literature to kids about responsible money management. That begins with our opinion of you. You can pay us to find out our opinion of you. We can't tell you the proprietary formula on how to improve our opinion, but it involves your purchasing banking products as much as possible."
I don't have a problem with their products, debt and deposit accounts. I don't have a problem with their keeping a record of consumers' reputations. My problem is they sell to kids and unsophisticated adults the idea that using banking products and keeping tabs on their opinion is just part of being a responsible person.
I wouldn't want my reputation tarnished by an inaccurate report that I failed to pay someone as agreed, but I don't care that much unless the opinion comes from a court that can issue a judgment. I am not seeking to borrow money or enter deals with people who see the credit bureaus' records as completely reliable.
I give references in my industry from time to time. I don't promote the idea that any responsible person should give my company at least some business to companies affiliated with me and should monitor my opinion at all times.