Experian's Fundamental Breach of Data Protection Act 1998 29 December 2013 at 2:57PM edited 29 December 2013 at 3:09PM in Credit File & Ratings 102 replies 14.6K views

GazNicki

Dovah_diva wrote: »

Lord, I suspect the OP is retired with a long and empty road ahead of him. If not, maybe he'll go back to work soon and give his rantings a rest.



You got that right. The OP is a man on a mission, there is little point in trying to engage with him. He will patronise and ignore good advice till the sky turns green. Makes for amusing reading though.

I too agree that the OP is clearly an individual with far too much time on his hands, although I found his posts to be far from amusing.

This could easily be condensed into one smaller post that simply read:

"I have found an error on my credit file which would instigate someone untowards has applied for credit in my name. I have contacted the CRA in question and asked them to look into this. Additionally, I have also contacted my Bank who has issued the credit incorrectly, and am awaiting their response.

I mention this because it was flagged up by an incorrect DOB on my credit file. As I actively monitor my Credit Report this was flagged up to me quickly.

I suggest that other members also have a look through their credit files and check that the details of all credits, including DOB information, is correct as this could indicate foul play."

This would probably have been rewarded with a hundred people replying with messages of thanks and blowing smoke up the OPs !!!! as he clearly wants. Instead he has made himself look narcissistic with his posts and insulted a number of people along the way. Shame on you OP!

VictimOfImpersonation

I guess you might be forgiven for your limited takes on all this if you are well-meaning. If you are not well-meaning then only you know what motivates you.

I am not interested in who hits the MSE Thanks button. I am interested in toppling bad business or bringing it to heel. It is dirty work and it is often thankless.

1 Negative factors

• You have recently opened 1 or more new credit accounts. No I didn't. A fraudster did. With an incorrect date of birth. My bank of umpteen years and umpteen products issued it and told my CRA of umpteen years that I am 8½ years younger than they thought I was. They swallowed it and for good measure gave me this negative factor for recently opening a new credit agreement. They know about it - it is a general problem. They don't seem to care.
  

0 changes since last report (despite issuing the clean-up invitation to Experian). We still live in hope.

» See more ? Tomorrow then - let us see what the New Year brings.

goonarmy

VictimOfImpersonation wrote: »

I guess you might be forgiven for your limited takes on all this if you are well-meaning. If you are not well-meaning then only you know what motivates you.

I am not interested in who hits the MSE Thanks button. I am interested in toppling bad business or bringing it to heel. It is dirty work and it is often thankless.

1 Negative factors

• You have recently opened 1 or more new credit accounts. No I didn't. A fraudster did. With an incorrect date of birth. My bank of umpteen years and umpteen products issued it and told my CRA of umpteen years that I am 8½ years younger than they thought I was. They swallowed it and for good measure gave me this negative factor for recently opening a new credit agreement. They know about it - it is a general problem. They don't seem to care.
  

0 changes since last report (despite issuing the clean-up invitation to Experian). We still live in hope.

» See more ? Tomorrow then - let us see what the New Year brings.

Thankless or fruitless? Im not sure you are aware of the difference.

Gordon_Hose

Experian just report what the banks send them, they don't make stuff up and add it to your file for a giggle.

Maybe start with the financial organisation that recorded the fraudulent info and go from there?

VictimOfImpersonation

As I was saying, I guess you might be forgiven for your limited takes on all this if you are well-meaning. If you are not well-meaning then only you know what motivates you.

I am not interested in who hits the MSE Thanks button. I am interested in toppling bad business or bringing it to heel. It is dirty work and it is often thankless.

1 Negative factors

• You have recently opened 1 or more new credit accounts. No I didn't. A fraudster did. With an incorrect date of birth. My bank of umpteen years and umpteen products issued it and told my CRA of umpteen years that I am 8½ years younger than they thought I was. They swallowed it and for good measure gave me this negative factor for recently opening a new credit agreement. They know about it - it is a general problem. They don't seem to care.
  

0 changes since last report (despite issuing the clean-up invitation to Experian). We still live in hope.

» See more ? Tomorrow then - let us see what the New Year brings.

goonarmy

VictimOfImpersonation wrote: »

As I was saying, I guess you might be forgiven for your limited takes on all this if you are well-meaning. If you are not well-meaning then only you know what motivates you.

I am not interested in who hits the MSE Thanks button. I am interested in toppling bad business or bringing it to heel. It is dirty work and it is often thankless.

1 Negative factors

• You have recently opened 1 or more new credit accounts. Blah blah blah
  

0 changes since last report (despite issuing the clean-up invitation to Experian). We still live in hope.

» See more ? Tomorrow then - let us see what the New Year brings.

See post number 49

matttye

Doing a mass cleanup could cause more trouble than it's worth.

If you think for just one second, it's not unheard of that people make typos when entering personal data. If I accidentally enter my year of birth as 1989 rather than 1988, it would be more distressing to me for my entire account history to suddenly disappear than for it to simply show the incorrect DOB.

The system DOES need change, but not on a mass automated scale as you're proposing. What should happen is that Experian and the other CRA's should remove data from your credit files without recourse to the lenders if you can prove the data relating to the account has nothing to do with you. And there should be a time limit for them to do so.

Cornucopia

I agree. This whole thing seems to be based on the OP's misunderstanding of what constitutes inaccurate data.

Just because the DOB is different, doesn't automatically make this data inaccurate. Yes, in an ideal world it would be raised as a query - but to discard it altogether would not serve the purpose of the CRAs.

VictimOfImpersonation

matttye wrote: »

Doing a mass cleanup could cause more trouble than it's worth.

If you think for just one second, it's not unheard of that people make typos when entering personal data. If I accidentally enter my year of birth as 1989 rather than 1988, it would be more distressing to me for my entire account history to suddenly disappear than for it to simply show the incorrect DOB.

Matt I understand your concern entirely, but the effect you are worried about is not what I proposed.

The initial query of the database can be done more or less instantly by the CRAs. So much so that I am sure they have done it many times. It is such an obvious query to run. They and their partner/providers simply do not wish then to do the costly amount of staged clean-up work that it would require over many months to sub-categorise and resolve the difficult mismatches or to open themselves up to fines, sanctions and penalties from ICO and FCA when they self-report breaches of the past.

Mismatches like mine where they have held reams of data on my accounts for decades all with the same date of birth and same address would be easy to categorise as "obviously incorrect recent input - query immediately with provider - suspect fraud - quarantine entry and remove from searchable record - alert VictimOfImpersonation"

An initial dob mismatch query would highlight where two or more dobs were present. Once the obviously recent and simple to solve glitches like mine have been dealt with, the rest can be sifted even more finely into a plan of clean-up work in partnership with whomever provided the data. Reports should be made to and monitored by ICO on how they are getting on with fixing the various breaches they and the providers have been guilty of.

I am not suggesting that whole credit reports are taken off-line while they do it, but if you are a young person starting out on building credit with two credit agreements for example with two dobs then I understand your concern if you found both got quarantined because neither carried sufficient weight to be seen as the correct one!

This wouldn't happen. They will have to manage it carefully, and yes it will cost them dear to do so.

And Cornucopia, I have cleaned up City databases so I know what I am talking about, thanks, and I very much hope you are posting out of a simple concern and not a position of knowledge.

CKhalvashi

Cornucopia wrote: »

I agree. This whole thing seems to be based on the OP's misunderstanding of what constitutes inaccurate data.

Just because the DOB is different, doesn't automatically make this data inaccurate. Yes, in an ideal world it would be raised as a query - but to discard it altogether would not serve the purpose of the CRAs.

I agree with this, too.

I had a credit agreement (done in branch), in my younger days show my dob as 1872 (instead of 1982), and whilst it was unfortunate, the loan went through, it was sorted when I'd noticed it (which was just before a mortgage application)

If I'd lost 6 years of credit history because of that, I'd have been a little annoyed.

CK