Abuse of Data creating a two tier society

Pixie5740

I blame the lizard people.

rizla_king

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I blame the lizard people.

AT LAST someone talks some sense.

Thrugelmir

DavidP24 wrote: »

As I said, I want to be there when you fall off the ladder and the dream you bought into becomes your personal nightmare and I will, in spirit if not in flesh, just a shiver running down your back or raising the hairs on your neck.

You are indeed a sad sad individual.

GingerBob_3

usefulmale wrote: »

Boatload of twaddle. Here, where Yorkshire Water report to the CRAs, all on our street pay EXACTLY the same for our water. I know because I asked them all. Plus, I have to pay for the water IN ADVANCE.

Same unit price for all the people who have the same gas and electric supplier as me as well.

Yes, water company reporting is an egregious aspect of CRA surveillance. They do it without consent, you don't have a contract with them, there are no T&Cs and it's debatable whether it's credit at all - it certainly isn't borrowing money. As with all forms of non-credit reporting to the CRAs, a trivial error or mistake by either party can result in severe difficulties in obtaining credit. Do everything you can to frustrate these scumbags who report your account to the CRAs; don't provide them with ANY personal information.

GingerBob_3

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You are indeed a sad sad individual.

Now, now Mr Thrugelmir. You know the rules. Comment on content, not contributor.

m4rc

DavidP24 wrote: »

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It affects your ability to rent because the majority of properties are listed online, the main online sites do not allow landlords to list their properties, only agents and they have a nice little scam going on, they charge you hundreds for things that cost a tenner, they charge the landlord and the tenant, Ultimately it comes down to competition, given the choice of a tenant with a squeaky clean credit report (or even five of them) and someone with a debt they say is a disputed, who are you going to choose. The agents then stop even putting you forward and it can take months to sort out.

Yes there are a few sites that are online agents but they subject you to the same system and the same outcome. There is Openrent but they have very few properties and you can imagine the competition is fierce.

Letting Agents can't see what credit you have, they can see any court judgements (CCJ's and bankruptcy orders). They don't know anything else unless you tell them, if they ask for proof and you show it then that's up to you but the past 5 rental properties I had before my current one both my partner and I had massive debts and my partner still has numerous defaults - 13 to be precise, most recent added 22 months ago.

We were told each time we would be 'credit checked', what they actually see is conformation of address and if we are bankrupt or have CCJs. Even when we were both bankrupt we told the agent and they were fine. I haven't had a CCJ for 20 years, don't remember any hassle renting a property - I have always rented.

I would never go through a private landlord, far too many dodgy ones out there, I've had some bad ones but as I've been with an agent with a good contract I've always got my own way.

The issue with the property market is not letting agents making money from pretending to carry out a full credit check, the issue is the state of the market and how buy to let landlords purely out for profit are able to buy more property simply because of the size of their portfolio. Many have put little to no real money into any of the properties, as long as the mortgage is covered by the rent they sail through the system. This means there are less properties available for the rest to buy, and they can just price the market as they see fit, all while treating people like scum and not bothering to maintain their properties.

Of course there are many decent BTL landlords, but there are many who rent out properties you wouldn't use as a bin storage unit.

You may have a lot more experience of this than me, I sold and let property for 5 years and have rented property to live in for 25 years so I have had a little experience myself.

Somerset

DavidP24 wrote: »

and having that system used to deprive you of basic utilities and a home.

How does the system deprive you of a home ? As m4rc said above, the info reported to an agent would be bankruptcy, IVA, CCJ's only. No info re defaults etc is supplied.


You said earlier :
''Ultimately it comes down to competition, given the choice of a tenant with a squeaky clean credit report (or even five of them) and someone with a debt they say is a disputed, who are you going to choose. The agents then stop even putting you forward and it can take months to so't rt out.''

The credit check performed by the agent doesn't show that disputed default. It' will show only the biggies ( bankrupcy CCJ IVA) and provide a meaningless score.

m4rc

Its never going to be easy when someone has had a completely different experience a I guess, in the same way you have had nothin but terrible service I have had e best of service, I can't fault any of it as there simply was nothing to fault. I'm not denying that credit reference system is not open to abuse, again it's just never bit me and always been an accurate reflection of the way I manage credit and my finances. I'm sure if it wasn't right I too would have a moan about it.

I haven't read the specific detail of the false reporting - I read your original post yesterday but don't remember what you said was reported or even if you did go into detail. If it reported a CCJ or court order then I can see how that would have done you some damage, if it showed something like late payments then I don't see how a letting agent could see that, and if I was in your situation I would be asking the information commissioner how a letting agent can see a full report. It's clearly stated that letting agents don't have access to that information, if they are getting it then that surely is the issue and not what was put on it correctly or incorrectly? The regulations state you can see the information that you report, letting agents do not report payment histories yet (unless the rules have changed since the summer).

Somerset

DavidP24 wrote: »

As I said I only know what happened to me, the agent was very open about it, I got copy of report and .....

I know when I request my report myself, it would show any defaults. An agents credit check on me would not show any defaults, just as I said bankrupcy, CCJ or IVA. I don't doubt what you say but if it happened, the agent had done something dodgy because there's no way he should have been able to access that information.

agarnett

Somerset wrote: »

... I don't doubt what you say but if it happened, the agent had done something dodgy because there's no way he should have been able to access that information.

Not getting at you in particular Somerset, but there's no way I think you or anyone else other than data scientists and specialist lawyers with knowledge of big data can analyse either the specific or general case and assert that anymore. There is no effective regulation of unlawful or fraudulent data handling in the UK and there is rather a lot of it about.

Chances are (and I use that phrase mathematically) you haven't a clue who else can produce as much about your financial, electronic activity and residential status as you can yourself, and of course it all started with never never home shopping catalogue company data, and has in the age of the internet proper been ably abetted by consecutive naive governments allowing government data out of their care. It is centred around CRAs and more nefarious outfits with links to medical data, telecoms data including what movie you downloaded last night and who copied bits of it from you via peer to peer file sharing, social media data, and government data and goodness knows what else.

If you don't know how to manipulate and combine data sources yourself, and you don't know who has the power to demand your data without your knowledge from one database and input it into another, then the real fact of the matter is that you don't know toffee about how you are exposed

And on the same score, without the prerequisite data science and legal knowledge neither can you come here and expect to be taken seriously if you childishly try to derail debate and fair warnings like the OP's with out of date distractions naming David Icke and lizard people, or alternatively, if you come here to preach that you are a man of the world and that CRAs are a good thing because you, the man for all seasons, have experienced some obvious "good" in their "services". I'd say, frankly, that kind of talk is the most conspicuously naive.