How Deadbeat Facebook Friends and Using ALL-CAPS Can Lower Your Credit Score
McGruber writes "CNN has the news that some financial lending companies claim that Facebook social connections can be a good indicator of a person's creditworthiness. One company determines if you are friends with someone who was late paying back a loan; if so, that is bad news for you. It is even worse news if the delinquent friend is someone you frequently interact with. Another company gathers information from the manner in which a customer fills out the online loan application. The chances of getting a loan improve if you spend time reading information about the loan on their website. Conversely, if you fill out the application typing in all-caps (or with no caps), you are knocked down a couple pegs in that company's eyes. A third lender requires that small business borrowers grant them access to the borrowers' PayPal, eBay and other online payment accounts (what could possibly go wrong with that?), thereby disclosing real-time sales and delivery information."
If your bank carries that much stock in Facebook "friends" you may want to consider borrowing from a different bank.
Kind of like employers who want your twitter password, just maintain eye contact and slowly back out the way you came in.
Dubious credit criteria and validation got us into a huge subprime mortgage mess and contributed to an economic downturn. Fortunately, this method doesn't appear to be widespread, but the same principle applies. Folks haven't learned the lessons of the last 100+ years and seem doomed to repeat the outcomes.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The personal and privacy costs of being a Facebook user are very high and increasing daily. No thanks.
HOW DOES I GET CREDIT CARD?
How using Facebook at all can bring harm to you in real life.
Case in point: a colleague's teenage daughter applied for a summer job at the local supermarket, got selected and went to a job interview. The interviewer asked her to "describe herself". She did, and the interviewer then said "that's not what your Facebook says. Thank you, we'll call you." She's only 16 and she wasn't doing anything particularly public or outrageous on Facebook. It hit her hard and my colleague says she's been kind of depressed by the rejection she's faced.
As for me, I've learned the hard way 13 years ago (before Facebook but after Google) that the internet never forgets, and whatever you say will come back to haunt you eventually. As a result, I've learned to shut my trap online whenever possible.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is why I friend corporations. It balances out the financial status of my real friends.
If you don't have Facebook account, banks conclude you are a sociopath and offer you CEO job.
The summary leaves out that the companies described aren't the major financial institutions in the US. The one who checks to see if you're friends with someone who defaulted on a loan from the same lender? Lenddo, which makes loans in the Phillippes, Colombia, and Mexico. The one who LOOKS FOR ALL CAPS? Kreditech in Germany, which uses that and "up to 8,000 data points" when assessing the loan (though I can't argue with that; as someone sitting down with a banker in person and YELLING THAT THEY WANT A LOAN is probably not a reliable borrower).
As for whether lenders should just use FICO, if FICO is available? It's reliable and predictive, and more difficult to game, but in an emerging market where your prospective borrowers don't have FICO history, what do you do to suss out whether a borrower is likely to default or not?
I keep some of my savings at Lending Club, which originally started out as a Facebook-based microlending platform -- the idea was that if you knew the people you were lending to, or at least understood their social graph, that you'd make better lending decisions. They dropped the concept a few years ago, my guess is that it didn't scale and there were practical difficulties. (I could see issues arising from sockpuppetry and slander, among other things...)
They do still loan to individuals, and when you lend you read their application, you can see where they live, their FICO, and what they plan to do with the money. And, guilty as charged, I never lend to people to do their application in ALL CAPS :)
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
And you miss the point entirely.
It doesn't matter whether it's Facebook or not. Your average Slashdot karma "score" and "friend," "foe," and "freak" settings could be abused like this.
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BMO
Spigot likely has the lowest credit score possible.
In that case, can I have a loan, bmo (77928)?
... That is, until it hurts your credit to NOT have a Facebook account. It hurts your credit to not have credit cards, it only stands to reason that, if this sort of information is fruitful, it'll cost you to not provide it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
One company determines if you are friends with someone who was late paying back a loan; if so, that is bad news for you. It is even worse news if the delinquent friend is someone you frequently interact with.
Reasonable but evil. I would not do business with this company.
Another company gathers information from the manner in which a customer fills out the online loan application. The chances of getting a loan improve if you spend time reading information about the loan on their website. Conversely, if you fill out the application typing in all-caps (or with no caps), you are knocked down a couple pegs in that company's eyes.
Reasonable and not evil. Understanding the terms of a loan typically means you're going to make at least a good faith effort to fulfill your obligations. I would probably do something like this myself.
A third lender requires that small business borrowers grant them access to the borrowers' PayPal, eBay and other online payment accounts (what could possibly go wrong with that?), thereby disclosing real-time sales and delivery information.
Unreasonable, evil, AND the potential to steal money from everyone who has applied for a loan! Is that you, Enron?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
That you are statistically more likely to default on the loan. They don't care about cause and effect. If someone showed that people with names beginning with T were 17% more likely to repay the loan than people with names beginning with F, and the difference was statistically relevant, then they'd give better rates to the T's than the F's.
You are judged by the company you keep. Deal with it.
If we had just "dealt with it" every time those with power abused their position, black people would still be slaves, women would still not have the vote, children would still be down in the mines, and manual labourers would still barely earn enough wages to live while working crazy hours under conditions that would seriously damage their health.
We have a long way to go, even in the first world, in terms of respecting each other as human beings. We aren't going to get much further if we adopt your attitude every time essential services that make society work start taking advantage of asymmetric power relationships with the ultimate goal of making more money no matter what.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
WELL, THERE GOES MY CREDIT SCORE.
FUNNY, MANY CREDIT REPORTS ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. POT. KETTLE.
THE FOURTH AGAINST THE WALL AFTER THE REVOLUTION WILL BE THE CREDIT BUREAU EXECUTIVES. THE FIRST THREE WILL BE MARKETING EXECUTIVES FROM SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION, LAWYERS AND POLITICIANS.
Damn. The all caps are hurting my brain.
And it tripped the filters.
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Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
A punishment for using caps lock! My prayers have been answered!
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.