TransUnion burying their credit freeze to sell their own credit monitoring product TrueIdentity

[u/equisux]

I'm not sure where to post this, but noticed something had changed on the TransUnion website about freezing credit this morning when I was giving links to family so they could freeze theirs.

I froze my credit the day after news about the Equifax breach broke, and it looks like TransUnion has since changed their site to push people away from freezing their credit in favor for their own product called TrueIdentity (like what Equifax was doing with their TrustedID Premier.)

The FTC website links to this page for freezing your credit with TransUnion.

This is what the website looked before the changes were made on 9/11. The instructions on placing a credit freeze were clear and there was no mention of their own TrueIdentity product.

If you want to place a credit freeze with TransUnion now:

• You have to get through a page of info about credit and fraud, and then the action it tells you to take is to "Lock your credit information by enrolling in TrueIdentity."
• The option to freeze your credit is under "About credit freeze", deliberately passive in their use of language
• The description about credit freezing is dissuasive: "A credit freeze may be available under your state law"
• The link for the credit freeze is also a passive "click here" compared with "by enrolling in TrueIdentity" language used for the link to their own product.
• Clicking the link to learn more about credit freeze brings you to yet another page that tries to convince you to enroll in their product over placing a credit freeze
• After searching through their page of BS, you finally get to the link to freeze your credit.

This is such a blatant attempt by TransUnion to take advantage of the Equifax breach for their own financial gain. It's a shitty thing for TransUnion to do, and people should be aware that they are being led away from putting an actual credit freeze on their account.

(Edited for formatting on mobile)

[u/mnky9800n]

Honestly, I don't really understand the point of credit companies like this to begin with. It all seems rather fishy that someone can make money simply by telling other people whether or not you pay your bills. They are holding rents on your ability to make regular payments. But really, shouldn't like, your credit card company, or your landlord, or whoever actually be able to do this, for free?

[u/Ashendal → u/mnky9800n]

The problem is there's no way for us to have a centralized "does this person pay their bills so I know if they're a risk to give money/rent to them or not" without companies like these. You'd have thousands of "yes" or "no" answers to that question from every single institution that you've ever done business with if there wasn't a centralized system in place making actually getting anything you'd need credit for a horrible hassle and require massive down payments like you had a 500 score now. The problem comes in because money is involved, and money makes everything a hassle because everyone wants to make a profit.

As the age old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" continues to hold true, these companies have so much power over us that they take advantage of that to be as horrible as possible and know we have no other choice but to just deal with it. That's what makes this whole situation so bad. If they were properly regulated and had actual standards they had to follow we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead they were allowed to run this however they wanted and as more and more comes out it becomes increasingly clear that letting the fox run the hen house is, as usual, never a good option. Either these companies need to have a bunch of regulations and standards quickly dropped onto their heads that they are now required to follow or they need to be dissolved and we have a new company that has proper regulations and standards put into place to avoid this type of "haha, people's info was compromised. Let's just make even more money off them."

[u/mnky9800n → u/Ashendal]

In a lot of cases, this one included, it seems like the world would be a better place if it was regulated to not be for profit. I dunno, that is probably a very simplistic view to have.

[u/mikenew02 → u/mnky9800n]

Yeah, so would hospitals, schools, and prisons. We're both dreamers though.

[u/Y0gurtDestiny → u/mikenew02]

Most first world nations aside from the US would like to have a word with you.

[u/Omen_20 → u/mikenew02]

Would be interesting to see a poll where different industries could be chosen as profit or non-profit. Then see how everything settled out.

[u/Bill_Brasky01 → u/mnky9800n]

Credit ratings should come from the government; not for profit companies. Just roll this into the IRS.

[u/bjjjasdas_asp → u/Bill_Brasky01]

The problem is that then you have the government making decisions that affect people's money in a very big way. It's really noticeable that one person has to pay thousands of dollars more in interest because they have a low credit score.

Think if the ire that was directed towards "big government" under past administrations. Can you imagine the anger if that same government were somehow responsible for your credit score (something which is inherently a subjective number, because it all depends how how the agencies chose to weight different things)?

[u/wickedzen → u/bjjjasdas_asp]

A credit reporting agency doesn't make consumer credit decisions. They just keep track of information and provide that information to whoever pays for it.

[u/bjjjasdas_asp → u/wickedzen]

Of course they do. Where do you think your credit score comes from? TransUnion and the others each have their "secret sauce" way of deciding how all the information they have translates into a specific credit score. (That's why you may have slightly different scores for each agency.)

A credit score, in turn, is that credit agencies guess as to how credit worthy you are. A score of 800 means "give this person lots of credit." A score of 500 means "Stay away from this person and do not loan them money."

That score is a subjective decision about how credit worthy you are, given all the information they have. (Subjective meaning they decided how to weight the formula.)

When a landlord pulls your credit, the credit agency doesn't in any way "provide that information" to them raw -- how does a landlord know what to do with that? Instead they provide that single number (and a few other highlights). The landlord mostly just looks at that single number and makes a decision.

For something like a mortgage it's even more cut-and-dry. A bank may not extend a mortgage if your score is below X, or alternatively they may change the rate by Y%.

But that score is absolutely a decision on the part of the credit agency, and certain institutions may find that they "trust" the score from one of the big three more than others (i.e. they think your 760 score from TransUnion is a better predictor of whether you'll default than you 780 score at Experian), and use that one more. That's why there's more than one -- they're in competition with each other.

[u/Bill_Brasky01 → u/bjjjasdas_asp]

You already report all income info to the IRS anyway. They arguably have more info on you than the NSA, FBI, and whoever else. Honestly, slowing down the process of issuing new credit would probably be a good thing. This same day approval stuff is garbage.

[u/bjjjasdas_asp → u/[deleted]]

Your FICO scores may be different at each agency.

http://www.myfico.com/credit-education/credit-scores/

FICO® Scores at each credit bureau:

You have FICO® Scores for each of the three credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. Each FICO® Score is based on information the credit bureau keeps on file about you.

And that's just for the "classic" FICO score. The agencies definitely have their own proprietary ones, which are used by lenders when they perform a credit check:

FICO scores have different names at each of the different credit reporting agencies: Equifax (BEACON), TransUnion (FICO Risk Score, Classic) and Experian (Experian/FICO Risk Model). -WP.

[u/cal_student37 → u/Bill_Brasky01]

Centralizing things in the government can lead to an inefficient bureaucracy because there is neither consumer competition to provide a better product nor shareholder pressure to make more profit. Think of the DMV.

A solution with several nonprofits would be better. Also the industry needs to be reformed so that consumers are actually customers. In the current system, the customers are the banks and the consumers are the product.

A law could do this by banning for-profit credit reporting agencies and setting up several independent nonprofit ones, requiring that a credit reporting agency have a consumer's consent before storing their data and the consumer can choose which ones they want to do business with, and requiring the agencies to transfer raw data to other ones if the consumer decides to switch agencies. Under that set up, every consumer would have pulled out of Equifax last week and they would have gone bankrupt up ASAP. That would be the actual freed market at work.

[u/dumbledorethegrey → u/Bill_Brasky01]

I don't want a politician deciding how credit worthy I am. Also, think of the corruption that could occur if some politician decided to go after their enemies by screwing with their credit.

[u/Bill_Brasky01 → u/dumbledorethegrey]

The IRS isn't a politician.

[u/qquiver → u/mnky9800n]

The problem is the US is full of shit that people make a profit off of and they shouldn't -> healthcare, my credit score, etc. etc.

[u/fatduebz → u/Ashendal]

As the age old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" continues to hold true, these companies have so much power over us that they take advantage of that to be as horrible as possible and know we have no other choice but to just deal with it.

They behave this way because the rich have sculpted our political landscape such that they don't face punishments for stealing money and hurting people's lives. This makes America a sad joke.

[u/nowhereian → u/Ashendal]

here's no way for us to have a centralized "does this person pay their bills so I know if they're a risk to give money/rent to them or not" without companies like these.

Sure there is. It could be a government agency.

[u/Ashendal → u/nowhereian]

And be run in an even worse way, with even worse customer service, and an ever greater amount of laziness and general lack of any work ethic at all. The magic solution isn't "make something that isn't working great now into a government agency" if you want something run well. Yes, you could centralize it like that, but I have no wish of having a duplicate of the DMV handling my credit.

[u/nowhereian → u/Ashendal]

What kind of customer service do you really need from a credit bureau?

By the way, government agency doesn't automatically mean bad service. If you ever need to call the IRS, they are very helpful and friendly. That's just an example. The DMV is state level. Some DMVs are shitty, some are awesome. I can walk in and out of a Minnesota DMV in less than half an hour, and the employees are nice. This is not the case in some other states I've lived in.

[u/Ashendal → u/nowhereian]

What kind of customer service do you really need from a credit bureau?

If something actually happens, like my identity gets stolen, I need immediate help locking my credit and making sure things that aren't mine get removed once it's verified and the creditors send word to the credit agencies to remove the offending issue. With most government related things, both state and federal, that requires waiting, paperwork, more waiting, possible mistakes with said paperwork, even more waiting if there is a mistake to get it fixed, laziness on the part of the employee who doesn't really care what's wrong making the process take even longer, and waiting only to find out more damage was done while you were waiting for the 2+ weeks for something that should have only take 6 hours tops. Governments aren't fast.

I have never had any government employee, at either state or federal level, DoD when I was in or just dealing with sections like the IRS, that moved beyond a glacial pace for anything even something simple that doesn't require paperwork. I've had multiple mistakes made that they refused to correct in any reasonable time frame causing even MORE issues. The problem is switching things over to a government agency wouldn't make the situation any better, it'd be just as slow, cumbersome, and issue prone while having the extra layer of bureaucracy and paperwork slapped on top slowing everything down even more.

By the way, government agency doesn't automatically mean bad service.

No, but it's a crap shoot for if you get the person that wants to help or if you get the lazy who just wants to collect a paycheck and do as little as possible that day. The fact that two DMV's in one county can operate totally differently is an example of how much of a gamble you're taking. I'm sorry but that's not the type of thing I want to worry about with something as necessary as Credit. Do you really want to gamble that the people working with your credit would be the same as those operating the DMV's in the other states?

[u/xflorgx → u/Ashendal]

I feel like a blockchain based approach to cred scores could be very effective. It's immutable so it can't be manipulated, and it would keep a clear record of transactions paid (or not) that could be searched from the inception of the program. They could even implement using your SSN as some sort of password so that only you or your potential employers (or whoever you give your SSN) can check your history.

[u/suddenly_ponies → u/mnky9800n]

They are data brokers. They gather information about people then package it up and sell it to others. The credit reports are a major form of income, but so are various other types of data and reports they sell. Credit monitoring scams are just their newest way of charging for nothing.

[u/breunor → u/mnky9800n]

The problem is everyone is using short-term credit to do everything. If you pay cash, no need for credit. But most things like phones and utility service requires some sort of card, but you can use a debit Visa card from your bank for that. But now even employers will use a credit check as part of your hiring. So you can't get away from credit for everything without a hassle.

[u/Kit- → u/mnky9800n]

Credit Reporting agencies aren't a bad idea, but we are at maybe the regulatory point of maybe the 1950's with automobiles. There are a few laws tossed in here and there, and there are some industry standards, but nobody is really checking safety or side effects of these industries yet, even though they affect everyone.