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Debt Collectors Using Facebook To Embarrass Those Who Owe
Not even the tranquility of FarmVille can save you from the long arm of debt collectors. Melanie Beacham says that a collector from MarkOne Financial contacted her relatives about her past due car note via Facebook. She is filing suit alleging that the company is harassing her family. Tampa based consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan says, "Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it's not only family members, it's all of your associates. It's a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use."
Communication with third parties: revealing or discussing the nature of debts with third parties (other than the consumer's spouse or attorney) (Collection agencies are allowed to contact neighbors or co-workers but only to obtain location information; disreputable agencies often harass debtors with a "block party" or "office party" where they contact multiple neighbors or co-workers telling them they need to reach the debtor on an urgent matter.)
And if they posted something on your wall, that could fall under a number of these laws. Hell, if you consider 'Facebook' an embarrassing media:
Contact by embarrassing media, such as communicating with a consumer regarding a debt by post card, or using any language or symbol, other than the debt collector’s address, on any envelope when communicating with a consumer by use of the mails or by telegram, except that a debt collector may use his business name if such name does not indicate that he is in the debt collection business
And if the debt collection's profile wasn't MARKONE DEBT COLLECTOR I'd be looking at that sort of shadiness as well.
Having been the subject of a mysterious $180 debt collection put on my credit report over six years after they allege it happened in 2003 with no attempts to contact me until two months ago, I implore this woman to seek more than just a court order against MarkOne but instead to get the law amended now that social network websites are prevalent. They are a new form of contact medium that exposes far more information than the phone book and the current laws should apply or be updated minimally to reflect this.
If you're wondering about my $180, I contacted them immediately. After getting all my current information so they could commence harassment, they told me to log onto some third party site and contest it. I did. Three weeks later I got a judgment: REMAINS. I was informed that, short of litigious action, that was the extent of my rights in that situation.
My work here is dung.
These jackasses know no bounds. Somehow a debt collector got my number thinking I was someone else and wouldn't top calling. Finally I had the phone company block the number because they wouldn't stop calling.
Is great. I don't know where it was found, but it could apply to so many headlines.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
A. Pay your debts
B. Go to your account settings in Facebook so that people can't mine all this information about you. Pass this tip along to your family and friends.
Seriously. Pay your bills, and then you don't have to worry about this. Simple concept. If you don't have a reliable stream of income, don't incur debt. I understand there are situations outside of your control, however most places won't send you to collections if you pick up a McJob or two and pay SOMETHING to them until your situation evens out (speaking as someone with a fair amount of debt for his age, despite a few jobless stints, who has never once missed a bill payment).
I got back to the country after six months to find two dozen garbled voicemails from a debt collector. My voicemail message stated that I was out of the country and could be reached at a certain e-mail address. It turns out the hospital had misfiled a claim and the insurance providers contract with that hospital required that claims be filed properly within six months. The hospital ate it, but not before I went through weeks of torture. Try explaining to a debt collector over the phone that the bill was a mistake and that it is being taken care of. The response being in poor english: "I don't understand sir, why don't you just give me your credit card information..." They threaten to have your house/vehicles taken away and will do anything to get the money, because they get a large cut of the debt. Had they simply listened to the voicemail message, they could have gotten their money properly.
I can see why embarrassing someone with the goal of shaming them into paying their debts may be an effective tactic, but this may not be technically illegal.
It's illegal to discuss the nature of the debt but you are allowed to contact other people to try to "locate" that person. Saying "I'm with MarkOne Financial, do you know how I can reach this person who it says is your sister" is probably legal, saying "Did you know your sister hasn't paid her car payment in 6 months" is not.
TFA leaves out the important details.
This is why there are "privacy" settings on Facebook. This person probably had their profile open to everyone and allowed anyone to see their friends list. It wouldn't take too long to locate someone with the same last name.
I think this style of approach should be perfectly allowable, but it should be regulated because one can obviously go too far. Not sure what form this regulation would take.. maybe some kind of government run website where people not paying their bills are listed.
Personally on the whole financial debt/credit issue.. I think both sides need a good dose of reality.
You have banks which specifically target and hope for people to get into crippling debt, because this is how they make their money.
You have consumers who go through credit cards like candy.. and even when the bills and creditors are calling, still think nothing of getting a new credit card and buying a new computer they don't really need.
You have bancruptcy as (or atleast percieved) an "easy out".
And you have collections agencies literally driving some to suicide.
And yes, I know people get into debt for reasons beyond their control. Illness probably being the big one. But I think if you live beyond your means for no other reason than you can.. then you get what you've got coming when debt collectors pull this shit.
If this has happened to you, file a complaint with the FTC and get legal council and sue.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
It's pretty despicable what the collections companies do... but really it still comes down to what information you are freely publishing on Facebook. If you are going to put yourself out there by exposing all your information then you really should not be complaining because someone has figured a way (or rather yet another way) to leverage that data for their own means. It's Facebook, how many loud discussions have taken place about how to reduce your exposure on FB to date? Just my 2 cents...
You have the right to demand that any collection action be done in writing and no calls to ones job or family, friends etc. However how that plays out on public social media is unknown. While there are rules about harassment and such would posting 'you owe us money and are late' constitute such? I have been late on a payment with a bank - by 1 week mind you - and had 5-8 calls a day on my cell phone using different numbers to cover who they were. Disgusting yes but illegal no.
honestly, it probably is somewhat trollish, but really--scuba has stated his opinion (common slashdot) and expressed his potential solution to the problem noted in the article (also common on slashdot) while backing this up with his personal experience (pretty much universal on /.).
The debt collectors and repo men perform a valuable service. If they don't collect then the costs get passed on to the honest consumer.
It's the AHOLES who run up the thousands on their credit card to eat out every night or buy stupid stuff like clothes and the latest cell phone or cars they can't afford.
Certainly collectors can be rude, but it's even more rude to buy something knowing you can't afford it and then complain when somebody wants their money back.
I don't know the specifics of the law and I admit that. But if this kind of thing is illegal, why hasn't it been happening for years?
This isn't necessarily an internet-specific issue, either. If this is legal, then what's to stop them from printing a list of "PEOPLE WHO OWE MONEY" in a newspaper ad? True, that costs money. But is it just the cost of the ad that has kept them from it?
What if they were to put a website up with a list of everyone who is more than a couple months behind on their payment? And why simply contact my relatives on Facebook? Why not post on my Facebook wall about how I don't pay my debts and shouldn't be trusted, or something to that extent? Sure, I can delete it. But I probably won't notice immediately, and if they're going after shame . . . that's the ticket.
Regardless of legality, I hope we can agree that this is disgusting.
Harassing people!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Of course you have your rights to privacy, and you can even change your privacy settings as much as you want. But everyone needs to remember that going on to the web is the same as going to the grocery store. You're in a public place and there is only so much that you can hide. Boost your privacy settings, or even more simple, pay your bills!
Ever since last week's rumors began about the new Facebook e-mail system supposedly designed to kill Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, I began to wonder why I'm not more enamored with the service. And now I think I know why. I see Facebook as the next iteration of AOL.
I was never a huge fan of AOL once the Internet came along. It had its moments, yes, back when the competition was BBS systems and peer-to-peer download sites. But once dial-up went away, the service began to fall apart and never fully modernized. If it could have modernized, it would be exactly like Facebook.
Facebook offers a closed experience much like AOL; it's comfortable place people go and check in. All that was ever missing from Facebook to make the relation more obvious was e-mail and a deep voice saying "You've got mail."
In this analogy, MySpace is actually Compuserve. Myspace is a little rougher edged than Facebook, just as Compuserve was a rougher edged version of AOL.
When the Internet came along, there was a lot of denial regarding the future of these services, and they managed to stay afloat by becoming conduits into the Internet when they should have been conduits from the Internet. The model was backwards.
Eventually, AOL bought Compuserve, and right at the peak of its popularity, it managed to merge with Time-Warner before its long slide to marginalization.
Facebook is AOL II. Only it began where AOL left off. If Facebook decides to buy MySpace sometime in the future, the analogy would be perfect.
In the end, AOL was stopped by the invention of the World Wide Web. And it took six or seven years before anyone noticed that the Internet gave you everything AOL gave you, only for free.
What's interesting to me about Facebook is that the user paradigm is skewed to be user-centric rather than Facebook-centric. Or so it seems. Everyone has their own virtual website with everything is centered around it. MySpace also uses this model. This was pioneered by LiveJournal, from what I can tell, but was taken to the extreme by MySpace then perfected by Facebook.
It was a different era when AOL was around, and this inside-out concept was never considered. The MySpace/Facebook idea is also different from the vanity pages and Geocities concepts because it's more like a gated community (like LiveJournal) than just tract homes (Geocities).
I was never sure that any of these folks actually knew what they were doing, but instead thought they were flying by their seat of their pants. Seeing that it has taken so long to add the email paradigm just confirms it my assumtion. Even the name "Face" "Book" is moronic, although I've never heard anyone point that out.
In other words, LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook are all sitting ducks for a genuine visionary who can take this to the next level. I sure hope Facebook isn't the end of the lineage. And since it took so long to bury AOL once the process began, we can expect the same with Facebook, but in the meantime, we'll just keep hearing more and more and more about Facebook in the years ahead. Ugh
Wow, this motivated me to look up Debtor's Prison in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors'_prison
The content surprised me; I thought that this practice disappeared around the time of Charles Dickens. Bad publicity on Facebook pales in comparison to this:
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I've been receiving mail for 4 years for the previous occupants of my house and getting phone calls for 2-3 for the previous owners of my phone number from debt collectors. What recourse do you have when these guys screw up because your name is John Smith and your a slightly obese farmer in Oklahoma who happens to resemble another couple dozen guys in your city with the same name?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I remember getting a call from a collector looking for payment on a mortgage for an house in San Francisco. I didn't know I had a house and San Francisco, so I guess it was good news and bad news.
I'm not sure why she is suing on behalf of her relatives. Wouldn't it be more logical (and stronger from a legal perspective) for her relatives to sue the collection agency for harassment?
... I have a big problem with the legality of someone else contacting me in pursuit of someone else's debt. If I am not that person or that person's spouse or their lawyer, and the debt is not in my name, leave me alone. I'm not the one who failed to be responsible, or to work with the debt collection company.
I once received a call from a Debt collector for my husband's ex-wife. My phone number was in my maiden name and there was no record of us being legally married. I was pissed off at both the collection agency and the husband's ex-wife. She still owes money and still hides from collection agencies, but somehow she can afford Steeler's season tickets....
Allow me to help. 1.) Post an on-topic comment. 2.) Make sure the comment in from step 1 is useful in some way, either bringing special insight to the discussion or at least additional information. 3.) ...
4.) Profit.
ugh. why does this pose a problem to people?
We've all made mistakes when we were younger... some of them continue to haunt us for what seems to be an interminable period.
My wife had defaulted on her student loan, and had since been making sincere efforts to try to make payments on it while on a very low income, even though the payments were little more than "good faith" payments, that could not even cover the interest (living about 30% below the poverty line is not fun).
After almost 10 years of this (student loan debts cannot be forgiven by bankruptcy), she heard about an agency that would handle extreme student loan cases, and took on an attorney from the agency to manage the situation, who would be paid based solely on his ability to resolve the debt. From that point on, the collection agency was required to only contact her through her attorney.
However, at least once every week, sometimes two or three times, we will still get a call with an automated recording from this company instructing her to call the collection agency with regards to an "urgent business matter". Suspecting it was from the collection agency with regards to her student loan debt the first time we received such a call, my wife contacted her attorney about it before returning it, who advised her to *NOT* return such calls, because apparently if she did, she would be presumed to be contacting the collection agency on her own to offer to repay the debt and they would no longer have to deal with her attorney, and the whole thing would have to start from square one. He advised her that agencies have found a quaint loophole in the law that permits them to keep recontacting the debtor if the contacting is done wholly by machine, because apparently the prohibition applies only to the employees of collection agencies, and machines are not considered employees.
So instead of taking the time to ponder the discussion and contribute to it in a positive manner, or maybe do a little searching and come up with some new information to add to the conversation you're going to play the pauper and beg for karma points so you can get a good grade? That's really not how things work here. If you add to the conversation, you'll get modded up.
Karma whoring is lower than trolling. I wish I had a mod point to reward you accordingly. Someone please nuke this creep from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.
If the info is true, then you are out of luck. The problem is that collection agencies often work with inaccurate information, especially if it has been outsourced.
You want to discard your privacy rights like an old tattered garment? Don't cry about it when you reap the consequences.
Like a lot of things, this depends on the perspective. E.g. i am an co-owner of a small company. In about 1% of all bills, people don't pay (b2b). Most of the cases are because they cannot: having bad luck or made mistakes. But once i a while, you stumble over someone who has made it his foremost principle, not to pay his bills. You start investigating and you find a lot of small companies in his wake he cheated (we stopped counting when we reached 400K Euros). Then, someday, you accidentially stumble over a social network page of him. Well, that's when payback time started.... The guy was really busy socializing and we had lot of doors for the bailiff to knock and ask, if the culprit had any assets.
Real story, the guy is currently serving three years in a german jail for fraud and lying under oath.
CU, Martin
I'm not going to say knocking on the door of everyone you know is a good thing when you're a month or two overdue on a bill. But if you're six months overdue, you know, maybe a family member or two should know about it. Yes, I know, breach of privacy, but hear me out. There's a lot of people out there who don't want to tell anyone about their financial difficulties, even the people closest to them. They don't want to be a burden, or they're too embarassed, or they have too much pride to admit there's a problem. If a debt agency contacts your brother or something, well, now someone knows. He can at least try to tactfully approach the problem and offer assistance.
While I'm at it, I'd ask that debt collectors find some tact themselves and stop being judgemental pricks, but I imagine that might be asking a little too much.
Over the past three years, I have been harassed by no less than four debt collectors looking for people. One debtor bore a similar name to my 8 year old son. Two others had no similarity to anyone in my family and are people I do not know. The latest one who started calling a few weeks ago is looking for my ex-wife and we have been divorced for four years.
The one looking for someone with my kids' name, robocalled with a recorded message for six months before I even knew who it was calling. The number was always "unavailable." When humans started calling, it took another three months to get them to stop. I had to get VERY nasty on the phone and threaten them with the state AG's office to get them to quit calling.
They are genuine scum!
You're assuming of course that the debt is actually owed.
A few years back I was contacted by O2's (mobile phone operator) debt collection agency to inform me that I was being taken to court (with a date set) for an unpaid sum of £7.25. This was the first attempt made to contact me by the company about a debt - and I hadn't been a customer of theirs for over 5 years on a pay as you go plan.
Contacting O2 resulted in being told "the debt has been passed to our collections agency you need to speak to them" while telling the agency I did not owe the money received the expected response of "we cannot confirm that; the debt has been passed to us and you must pay it regardless" along with various threats of the amount I would end up paying if I did not pony up the £7.25. Being stubborn (or stupid) I refused to pay. Thankfully I had been uncharacteristically diligent and had paperwork of the account covering ending of the service which made the agency realise they weren't going to win if it went to court and they no longer wanted a part of it. Back to O2 and 5 months of beating them over the head with "if you are sure I owe this money then you must be able to explain what I was charged for" and they finally cleared the debt as a "courtesy".
Granted this is (hopefully) an unusual case - but it cost me a not inconsiderable amount of wasted time effort and stress - regardless of the actual amounts involved. Imagine if on top of this the agency had been sending what amounts to unsubstantiated gossip to associates online. Friends/family perhaps would hopefully give you the benefit of the doubt - work colleagues perhaps not so much.
There is real risk of defamation of character here - the attitude you display towards those who carry debts just goes to prove how damaging such accusations could potentially be.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
As Zuckerberg said, "The age of privacy is dead". It should be no surprise to anyone that debt collectors are starting to harass your social network. Why not? Businesses can pre-screen you through your free to the public domain Facebook profile. Websites are already data mining every site you visit in an attempt to make the internet one big commercial. It's the invasion of privacy that is 'Facebook' and you willingly signed up for it. You post your phone numbers, e-mail addresses, thousands of pictures of you doing various illegal/embarassing activities, fail to turn on your privacy filter and cry because you have absolutely no idea how anyone could have possibly stolen your private information. Remember in the '90s when you weren't even supposed to give out your last name on the internet? Well Facebook is what happens when you do. Sorry.
Seriously.
I have owned my current house for 11 years. A few months ago I started getting calls on my landline for debts incurred by one of the previous owner's kids.
The kid hasn't lived here in over 10 years. The kid never had my telephone number.
The scummy debt collectors cross-referenced an old address to a phone number, completely ignored the directory information on the number, and started harassing me mercilessly.
It took many weeks to get them to understand that I was perfectly serious about taking them to court if they didn't lay off.
But I'm glad I live in a country where this would be illegal
This is blinging
Some time ago I got a land line. Was part of a package deal from the cable company so why not? I mean can't hurt to have... ...except apparently it was a number that debt collectors though someone lived at. All the fucking time with the calls and they wouldn't listen that I was not the person they were looking for and didn't know where they were. Some of them wanted to get more of my information which of course I was not about to give.
Debt collectors are basically like spammers. They just go after anything they can to see what they can catch. They don't give a shit about accuracy or that sort of thing.
My credit report is filled with nothing but "pays as agreed, never late," (I have never, on any account been late, ever) and yet I still have to put up with debt collectors at various times. Really tells you something about the industry.
I work at a collection agency. This breaks all sorts of FDCPA laws, especially about releasing information to 3rd parties.
This agency will get audited very soon.
Once when moving out of an apartment, I had the manager come in on the day I moved out after the apartment was empty. She and I went through the whole apartment and did the evaluation for how much of my deposit I would be getting back. The end result was that I was going to get back all of my deposit minus the small fee for cleaning/whitewashing/whatever that happens.
Fast forward two months -- I get a call from a debt collector wanting me to pay money to the apartment complex. Well, being as I was expecting a check back from them, and this was the great state of California, my response was this:
"I am due a refund of X dollars from the apartment complex. I have this in writing and signed by the apartment manager. Their refund is now past due, as California state law allows the apartment complex only 30 days for the ex-tenant to receive their money. As such, if I do not have a check in my hand by the end of the week, I am contacting the CA housing authority as well as the sheriff and going after both of you for failure to pay, harassment, and fraud."
She apologized profusely, and in 3 days I had a check in my hand with the full amount owed to me. Woo-hoo!
If they provide validation, that means you owe the money.
If they simply refuse to provide validation, then yeah, you might need to sue.
It's small claims, and about $25.00 according to this website.
http://mortgage-home-loan-bank-fraud.com/legal/15_USC_1692g.html
Plus, if they are in violation, (depending on your state), they may wind up owing YOU money.
Wrong section... this should be in YRO. ... and because of this, we get to "Read" this article in the broken idle code. Yay.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Well, there are going to be a lot of unemployed debt collectors soon.
Maybe they can form a facebook group, called "We are Fucking Idiots".
Mine's in court but basically I'd tell either one, debt collector or original debtor, I can't pay. End of story. I'm also what lawyers call "judgment proof" (look it up). Sucks to be either one, but one can't get blood out of a stone.
When I was in my late teens/early twenties I had a secured credit card.. I didn't realize at the time that by opening one of these I essentially gave the bank my $300, but after I withdrew the money from that account and closed it (when moving states) they didn't bother trying to send me any notices or anything. It was 5 years later that I was contacted by a collection agency that had bought the dept. I paid it off after some argument.
Fast forward another 6 years, and yet another company is trying to collect $151 on that same account claiming that I never paid it the first time. Needless to say, I don't recall getting any information about the first time I paid it off, nor would I know where I filed it -- 6 years in your mid/late-twenties is a long time. Anyhow, I'm closing on a house in a few weeks, and I can't contest this since it will keep me from being able to finalize on the house.
I think it's plausible that these shady collection agencies sell previously collected debts to other companies and "lose" some paperwork in the process. I'm also not fully sure they don't sit on these shady accounts until they see a person get into a situation where they can't contest them.
There's no need to quit Facebook over this, all it takes is making the list of friends viewable by friends only. Which is actually good practice for all social networks.
Don't use facebook. Seriously though, why would you allow random strangers to post stuff on your page? Wouldn't making your facebook page private/by invitation only prevent these problems?
As someone who's been sporadically harassed by two different groups, one for somebody else who shares my first and last name, and another for someone who presumably previously held my phone number... I say screw them all. And if they decide to look my mom up on facebook and harass her too... well, my mom's always been better at getting through to people, maybe she could convince them to stop it; I certainly haven't been able to.