
How Goldman Sachs Made More Than $1B with Credit Scores - jonwachob91
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-goldman-sachs-made-more-than-1-billion-with-your-credit-score-1491742835
======
FTA
People are always terrified of the Big Brother from government, but any time I
have to verify my identity with questions like "What street of the listed have
you lived on?" or "Which of these banks do you have a loan with?" it makes me
realize how much aggregated data private (especially financial) companies
have. I can imagine these corporations selling that info for good money, like
how many transactions you make at a fast food restaurant in a given month to
health insurance providers.

~~~
user5994461
As an European who've tried the American way. I have to say that it is clearly
worse.

In the EU country I was, when i get a job/flat/whatever, I give a copy of my
national ID and tax statement, and that's alright.

In the USA/UK, when I get a job/flat/whatever, noone trusts me or the
government. I have to give plenty of documents and 5 years of history to a 3rd
party shady check agency, that's gonna resell the data and spam me.

You can be sure that after a few years of your life, everything about you have
been resold by these agencies and is available to the world: all your
addresses, jobs, income, family situation, etc...

You American guys have hundreds of private big brothers incentivized against
you, all because you wanted to avoid trusting a government. That didn't go
well.

~~~
snarfy
> all because you wanted to avoid trusting a government. That didn't go well.

I'm not so sure considering the current administration.

~~~
user5994461
The administration already has all these information. You're registered for
taxes, healthcare, criminal background, etc.

You're not hiding anything from them and you're not helping yourself by
duplicating that to shady agencies.

------
machineloop
Alt link: [http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-
markets/2017040...](http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-
markets/20170409526/how-goldman-sachs-made-more-than-1-billion-with-your-
credit-score.aspx)

------
patrickmn
It's pretty terrifying how much information CreditKarma (TU- and Equifax-
backed,) Mint and such have, and what that turns into when it's shared and
combined.

~~~
superquest
True. Recently I logged into Mint for the first time in a few years, and was
quite disturbed to realize they had been importing every debit or credit card
transaction, and every student loan payment I made. They know my financial
health better than my bank does ...

~~~
trendia
This is why I don't trust cloud services. I track my budget using PearBudget
[0], an Excel (or LibreOffice) spreadsheet.

[0] [https://pearbudget.com/](https://pearbudget.com/)

~~~
greenleafjacob
I have been looking to use GNUCash myself as a replacement for YNAB. Part of
my general drive to text based scriptable systems over GUI.

~~~
aidenn0
GNUCash is scriptiable (in fact IIRC much of the out-of-the-box functionality
is written in guile), but [http://ledger-cli.org/](http://ledger-cli.org/) is
much more of a text-based system than GNUCash.

------
snowmaker
The "web" link isn't working for me anymore, even in an incognito browser. Is
it working for anyone else, or is there some other solution to read WSJ
articles?

~~~
grzm
This workaround using Facebook has been posted:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13621072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13621072)

I haven't tried it myself, and it may no longer work. Might be worth giving it
a try.

------
kevindong
I assume that this is why every bank has started offering free TransUnion
credit scores/reports in the last few years to cardholders/members.

------
FT_intern
Let's also not forget about the traditional finance companies (Chase, BAML,
Citi, Wells Fargo, Amex, etc.). They sell your data and are a large source of
the random credit card offers you receive. And you can't opt out.

~~~
rubyfan
You can opt out on the credit card offers.

[https://www.optoutprescreen.com](https://www.optoutprescreen.com)

------
broknbottle
Interesting, Goldman Sachs bought this off a private equity firm that recently
bought (2 years ago) my previous employer.

------
downandout
Paywall bypass link:
[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhow-
goldman-sachs-made-more-than-1-billion-with-your-credit-score-1491742835)

------
floatrock
Like, a solution that doesn't involve paying for journalism that you enjoy and
find useful?

~~~
xbmcuser
Personally I wouldn't mind a global $20-25 newspaper subscription where my
views are paid to the newspaper like it is done for music with Spotify.

~~~
techsupporter
That sounds like PressReader to me. I pay them $30/month and can read all of
the newspapers from around the world that I want. (A lot of libraries also
offer access with a library card; another good reason to visit your local
library.)

------
nojvek
This is the wild west of information rape I guess. Companies buy companies who
buy other companies. As an average customer you just don't know who has what
interests and where your info is getting used.

Even companies that started with noble goals like whatsapp ended up selling
out to Facebook troves of private info.

The only way I see things change is a holocaust level fuck up because people
think they have nothing to hide. I predict the next generation terrorism in
the digital form

~~~
a3n
> The only way I see things change is a holocaust level fuck up ...

... that affects lawmakers and/or exposes national security secrets.

I imagine there's a lot of clandestine spending that can be correlated and
will eventually bubble up inadvertently.

~~~
tomohawk
Like this one?

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2941754/data-
security/o...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2941754/data-security/opm-
the-worst-hack-of-all-time.html)

