British Startup Strip Mines Renters' Private Social Media For Landlords (washingtonpost.com)

Rick Zeman writes: Creepy British startup Score Assured has brought the power of "big data" to plumb new depths. In order to rent from landlords who use their services, potential renters are "...required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles. From there, Tenant Assured scrapes your site activity, including entire conversation threads and private messages; runs it through natural language processing and other analytic software; and finally, spits out a report that catalogs everything from your personality to your 'financial stress level.'" This "stress level" is a deep dive to (allegedly) determine whether the potential renter will pay their bills using vague indicators like "online retail social logins and frequency of social logins used for leisure activities." To make it worse, the company turns over to the landlords' indicators that the landlords aren't legally allowed to consider (age, race, pregnancy status), counting on the landlords to "do the right thing." As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report, unlike with credit reports. Landlords first, employers next...and then? As the co-founder says, "People will give up their privacy to get something they want" and, evidently, that includes a place to live and a job. In late May, an apartment building in Salt Lake City told tenants living in the complex to "like" its Facebook page or they will be in breach of their lease.

Comments

The greater threat

[Anonymous Coward]

The greater threat is posed by niggers, chinks, kikes, towelheads, and all different kinds of slant eyes. They hate western civilization and seek to destroy it. We can't allow that to occur. This is a far greater threat than what's described in the article. White power must rise up against this threat. My hate is strong and I'm quite proud of this. The hate is growing stronger in me as I talk to you people. However, nothing I've said in this post is racist and I'm definitely not racist. Don't mod this post down. People need to see the truth about this threat. Only Hillary Clinton has what it takes to protect western civilization. Hillary 2016!

Re:The greater threat

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that you hate women as well, and white people who like the people you hate. You also forgot to mention that you enjoy prison sex and that sucking another mans penis is ok by you because you are a nazi who like to suck cocks of other nazi racist scum. But your not a fag, you just hate loving the feeling of another nazis cock in you anus because you can't admit that all nazis are homosexuals as that would mean you hate yourself for being what you hate.

Re: The greater threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not Trump?

Re: The greater threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Dad?

Re: The greater threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, we have a faggot sex expert here!

Please stop projecting, nobody wants to hear it. 14/88 faggot.

1789

[Anonymous Coward]

Guillotine For The Rich NOW !!!

Re:1789

[Yvan256]

Oh, sure. Only they can afford to get huge machines with a giant stainless steel blade.

All I have is this small steak knife.

Re:1789

[Coren22]

You have to admit though, a guillotine would be useful for cutting the watermelon...

It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not the government. Freedom of speech can only be affected by the government </snark>

Re: It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut it down.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[GrumpySteen]

What part of "British Startup" made you think that the USA's constitutional amendments would have any relevance whatsoever?

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[donaldm]

What part of "British Startup" made you think that the USA's constitutional amendments would have any relevance whatsoever?

If you look at the heading of the article it says. "In late May, an apartment building in Salt Lake City told tenants living in the complex to "like" its Facebook page or they will be in breach of their lease. If you don't know Salt Lake City is in the USA so the main article has relevance.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[NotDrWho]

Freedom of speech can only be affected by the government

The SJW's who say "A private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights" whenever some social site censors "hate speech" see no irony at all in the fact that this is the exact same argument that restaurants and landlords used in the 1960's to exclude minorities.

Another favorite is "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." My grandfather and uncle used to say that exact same phrase when they talked about beating up Vietnam-protesting hippies.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

> The SJW's who say [...]

Whiney-whiney-whine.

Why do most of the texts containing the string "SJW" have the intellectual level of three-year-olds?

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[dontbemad]

The SJW's who say "A private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights"

I think you have that backwards. The SJW types are usually the ones crying for more censorship and control, not less. No SJW would tell you that a private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights. If anything, the would seek to crush any business that doesn't conform to their hyper-progressive worldview.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

An extra link to another /. post that the editors tacked onto a vaguely related story in order to try and get more page views is not a heading. A heading is a title. The title is "British Startup Strip Mines Renters' Private Social Media For Landlords".

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The SJW's who say "A private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights"

Oddly, in the past it's been the libertarians and conservatives who have been most loudly shouting that private companies aren't allowed to respect your civil rights.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the SJWs point out, rightly, that the 1st Amendment doesn't cover private companies. This only happens because the libertards brought up the 1st Amendment in the first place, because they love to scream about it even though they don't quite understand what it says or means (see also the 2nd Amendment).

Civil rights laws do affect private companies and private landlords. They do not grant freedom of expression though.

You're very very confused about this whole issue.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[jellomizer]

Where do you get the idea that freedom of speech means there are no consequences for what you say.

If you are going to mess with your public image with social media, then you will probably get screwed by it too.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[mi]

The SJW's who say "A private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights" whenever some social site censors "hate speech" see no irony at all in the fact that this is the exact same argument that restaurants and landlords used in the 1960's to exclude minorities.

Whether SJWs see the irony or not, both groups were/are correct:

• Private company is not (legally) obligated to protect your (well, yours it is, but not that of other people) freedom of speech
• Business owners should not be forced into providing business to anyone. We surrendered an important freedom back in the 1960s in exchange for temporary (feeling of) fairness — and still do not have either.

Once you step away from liberty, you lose...

Re: It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

You tell us! It appears multiple times in your text.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

My grandfather and uncle used to say that exact same phrase when they talked about beating up Vietnam-protesting hippies.

So if they protested *for* the war your grandfather and uncle may have never left vietnam? Maybe they hadn't fully though it through?

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because that's about the intellectual level that most SJW's can understand...

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, that was my point. They're adopting the very same arguments their traditional opponents have used with no sense of irony.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[NotDrWho]

No, the SJWs point out, rightly, that the 1st Amendment doesn't cover private companies. This only happens because the libertards brought up the 1st Amendment in the first place, because they love to scream about it even though they don't quite understand what it says or means (see also the 2nd Amendment).

Your post taught me several things I didn't know, including:

1) Freedom of speech is the only one of the constitutional rights that's not considered a civil right
2) It's okay for a restaurant or any other business to post signs saying "Blacks and Jews may not talk in this place of business."

Have you considered lecturing at law schools?

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[NotDrWho]

Their thinking was that they hated hippies and liked kicking the shit of them. I think that's about as far as they thought it through.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[TechyImmigrant]

I don't think you have fully grasped the meaning of "the heading of the article".

Hint: The heading is the big text at the top. Not the unrelated link at the bottom.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[flopsquad]

Ah, another user snared by /.'s new AppendVaguelyRelatedLinkBot.

Because it's included with the summary text, a reader might reasonably believe one of these href dingleberries has something to do with the summary or article. But instead, it's a link to another, semi-random Slashdot article that is only vaguely related to the subject matter. It is most likely a tool to increase internal pageviews, recirculating readers (like greywater going from your shower to your toilet) into barely on-topic posts from the recent past.

You can recognize this phenomenon by these hallmarks:
- The link is always to another /. article.
- The dangler always feels awkwardly tacked on, like a person who doesn't understand the topic trying to chime in and sound smart. Or like the textual uncanny valley of a chat bot giving you a close-but-weirdly-off non sequitur.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The SJW's who say "A private company isn't obligated to respect your civil rights" whenever some social site censors "hate speech" see no irony at all in the fact that this is the exact same argument that restaurants and landlords used in the 1960's to exclude minorities.

No, the SJW point out that there isn't a law restricting such activity, unlike how there is with renting and public commerce. Commerce isn't speech, and more importantly, asking the police to remove persons necessarily involves the state. As such, it's the same issue as restrictive covenants, you want the state to enforce your contracts, you have the problem of contracts that the state will be asked to enforce.

If you want the private companies to be forced to carry your speech, set up the laws to make that happen.

Another favorite is "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." My grandfather and uncle used to say that exact same phrase when they talked about beating up Vietnam-protesting hippies.

Oh my, somebody likes to appear as if they were tough by proxy, don't they? Can your dad beat up my dad too?

Of course, the irony of you taking on the cloak of violence yourself while trying to appear sanctimonious is amusing.

Why don't you just try to secede while you're at it? You're basically a caricature of the right-wing, so you might as well go all the way.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple matter of which side you want your bread buttered on. Example: They can protest that a local magazine should remove all references to X. It's not government censorship of X, it's a private company.

They'll deny they're throttling civil rights, though. They HAD to remove the references to protect the victim'd civil rights of X. Or the adjacent Y or something.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

> Business owners should not be forced into providing business to anyone.

Certain classes of businesses absolutely *should* be forced to providing services to *all* paying customers. Specifically, those businesses which provide basic levels of essential services to individuals; food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, health care.

Does this reduce a liberty? Yes. Is that reduction in liberty a net positive for society? Fuck yes.

When people know that regardless of how society perceives them they can purchase all the *essential* items that they can afford, this greatly increases *their* personal liberty by guaranteeing that they can behave in ways that are entirely legal, but not condoned by the community in which they live. This freedom makes society more vibrant and healthy.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Salgak1]

Certain classes of businesses that can be forced to "provide to all" have a name.

"Public Utilities".

In such cases, they generally are the only provider of that particular good or service.

If there are multiple providers, market forces will tend to eliminate those that refuse to provide to all paying customers. . .

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The way it works in Britain is that if you want to run a business that caters to the public, you can't be choosy.

Run a cafe? Can't discriminate. Paint portraits for friends? Do what you like.

It gets a bit woolly in commission work. It's illegal for a business to refuse to bake a cake for a wedding they don't approve of, but I think you'd be hard pressed to make a discrimination case against (say) a fundamentalist Christian photographer who declined to take snaps at an orgy, but I think that's largely the difference between work-for-hire and retail.

The law is there to balance my rights and yours; I have a right not to be discriminated against when I'm shopping; you have a right to deny service to people out who are causing actual harm (rather than just making you uncomfortable). We both have the right to believe what we want, and act on those believes, right up to the point it starts to harm someone else. If I can't get a god damn cup of coffee because of the colour of my skin, then something is messed up.

There's no liberty vs security/fairness angle here; it's one person's liberty vs another's, and we have collectively decided we're fine with the line where it is.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Coren22]

It is also the intellectual capacity of those who complain about the title SJW as if it has anything at all to do with the content of the message.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[BronsCon]

Uhm... "allowed" and "obligated" are two different words with distinctly different meanings.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[BronsCon]

Business owners should not be forced into providing business to anyone.

And they're not; they just can't refuse service for specific reasons. If you want that black guy out of your place, find something he's doing that you don't like, other than being black. If you can't find something he's doing wrong, you have no legitimate reason to not serve him.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[BronsCon]

Of course, the irony of you taking on the cloak of violence yourself while trying to appear sanctimonious is amusing.

I think he meant to demonstrate how that argument was used to justify the unjustifiable, you merely missed the point.

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are multiple providers, market forces will tend to eliminate those that refuse to provide to all paying customers. . .

Except in the segregated places that made the Civil Rights Act necessary. Why would it work now when it didn't then?

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to imply that others are below your "intellectual level", you might want to learn how to use an apostrophe first.

Re: It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

He was thinking about it but he's a black Jew so he's not allowed to speak in class...

Re:It's okay, it's not a freedom of speech issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Business owners should not be forced into providing business to anyone. We surrendered an important freedom back in the 1960s in exchange for temporary (feeling of) fairness — and still do not have either.

Once you step away from liberty, you lose...

Uh-huh. Let's say the SJWs ascend to political and economic supremacy, and in a fit of vengeful pique declare you and yours to be the new underclass. Your "liberty" would let them throw you and yours into the gutter by refusing to let you participate in the economy. This is, of course, exactly what happened to the black people in the past and why the Civil Rights Act was written to take your precious "liberty". I suppose you think losing the ability to own slaves was also some horrid blow to "liberty"? You're only sanguine about the ability to boot the weirdos from society because you don't see the possiblity of being declared weird, subhuman and inferior and facing exile or serfdom as a result.

landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that mean? A landlord can't turn someone down without having to give a legal and adequate reason? Could a landlord have to defend a rejection of a tenant, in court?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[geekmux]

What does that mean? A landlord can't turn someone down without having to give a legal and adequate reason? Could a landlord have to defend a rejection of a tenant, in court?

The problem with bringing up terms like "legally defend" is the fact that it's going to cost someone money to do so. And likely more than they can afford. I'm willing to bet that the "target" audience for this are those who cannot afford to challenge this legally, which is almost as disgusting as the actions to destroy privacy detailed in TFS.

This needs to be shut down. The world needs to see this and respond. It's too bad most don't give a shit about privacy anymore.

Quite honestly, it's sad, because if a boycott of online services created an impact large enough (read: people would have to start giving a shit about privacy again), then social media owners would be the one legally challenging this. I'd love to see this piss-ant start up defend themselves against the social media giants.

Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Oxygen99]

Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.

Are you kidding? Landlords would chew their arm off to use this service. No sinister state sponsored motive required.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

IMHO this invades people's privacy and causes self-censorship in the long run. This kind of tool would also open the door for all kinds of discrimination; people who won't rent to homosexuals, people of different ethnic backgrounds, people with differing political views and so forth. All of the aforementioned types of discrimination are a reality already today, but we should by no means make it easier for anyone.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[geekmux]

Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.

Are you kidding? Landlords would chew their arm off to use this service. No sinister state sponsored motive required.

NO business would "chew their arm off" to use this if the end result was no new customers, AND existing customers leaving, because they would not agree to the new terms.

As I said, people would have to start giving a shit about privacy again for that to happen.

People NEED to start giving a shit about privacy again to avoid this becoming the norm, or even a mandate across all businesses. I fail to see the need for this kind of invasive shit when landlords have plenty of other protections and tools at their disposal. Show me how the results of data mining like this fixes some kind of "growing problem" that landlords are dealing with. I'm willing to bet they can't.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too bad most don't give a shit about privacy anymore.

Reminds me of the mid 90s and BBSs... you NEVER gave your real name out, or your photo (it would've taken forever anyway)

Then look at how things are today...

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[jafiwam]

Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.

Are you kidding? Landlords would chew their arm off to use this service. No sinister state sponsored motive required.

Quite possibly you are right.

On the other hand, a credit check and a simple "must be above this point" criteria works wonders for landlords. (Or so they tell me.) It's simple, will be fair because it's both open and everybody has an equal chance to get approved.

I am not sure most landlords would really care about it as long as the checks clear on time and the place isn't trashed or there are complaints by other tenants.

As a tenant myself, I LIKE the fact that the landlord is weeding out people that can't pay. It's a nicer place to live as a result. Plus it makes me more willing to positively contribute if everybody else is also.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[zabbey]

NO business would "chew their arm off" to use this if the end result was no new customers

When your potential customers like to set up meth labs or are just generally scummy assholes that will have no regard for your property or other residents, yeah, they would.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's wrong with discrimination? I do not want pimps, LGBT, drug addicts, rappers and such trash living in my building.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I am likely to set up a meth lab huh? Well a fuck you to you to.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

> When your potential customers like to set up meth labs

Wouldn't the usual criminal background checks already indicate this?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[geekmux]

NO business would "chew their arm off" to use this if the end result was no new customers

When your potential customers like to set up meth labs or are just generally scummy assholes that will have no regard for your property or other residents, yeah, they would.

Sorry, but this is why criminal background checks, credit checks, and deposits exist. I highly doubt social media sleuthing is going to flush out a meth dealer. Regardless, the answer here isn't to treat everyone like a criminal. The answer here is harsher punishments against actual criminals.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you don't want black people either?

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Howitzer86]

He said pimps and rappers, that's a sufficient dog whistle for someone like that without the balls to just come out and admit that they are bigots.

What he doesn't realize is that there aren't many people who'd want someone like that as their landlord. People that nasty tend to be horrible in other ways.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Entrope]

The so-called "right to be forgotten" disagrees with you. Once a criminal serves their time in prison, or more likely are simply released with a caution or ASBO, they are Reformed. They will be good for their entire life, so landlords and the like have no right to know whether their would-be tenant blew up his last two apartments and left meth-lab chemicals saturating the walls to neighboring units.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Entrope]

Activists in the US want to strictly limit or ban credit and criminal record checks by landlords and employers (e.g. "ban the box"), on the basis that these things "disproportionately" affect minorities -- especially blacks.

If you like your credit-check-screened apartments, you probably can't keep your credit-check-screened apartments.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Bradmont]

> This needs to be shut down If it's against Facebook's terms of service, couldn't Facebook sue them into oblivion?

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Whew! This thread just didn't feel right without a bitter white guy - angry at women, brown people, and socially well adjusted white guys. Thank heavens Trump is here to fix all that LMAO

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[literaldeluxe]

That's not what "ban the box" is about. Here, I'll let Wikipedia explain it to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

This is why you put whatever you need into the agent contract so it bites them.

A prospective tenant tried to sue me for not accepting her application to rent my house. She had two large dogs. My contract with the agent says No Pets. So I rejected it and made it their problem. No lawsuit as a tenant will almost never sue a rental agency: being permanently blackballed hurts.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Activists in the US want to strictly limit or ban credit and criminal record checks by landlords and employers (e.g. "ban the box"), on the basis that these things "disproportionately" affect minorities -- especially blacks.

If you like your credit-check-screened apartments, you probably can't keep your credit-check-screened apartments.

You mean they started off as outright bigots, then moved to more furtive methods, and then more furtive, so that they could continue doing things the way they wanted to do, and yet the rest of society somehow disagrees with their practices due to the effects.

Really, landlords, employers, bankers, they've always had ostensibly good and noble reasons for their actions, but somehow they seem to want to make everybody else pay.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[jareth-0205]

It's more than just 'giving a shit' though, the market won't protect people at the bottom of the rung because they can't afford to give a shit. Housing is particularly egregious for this because it's not something you get much choice in alot of the time. Britain is in the middle of a housing crisis at the moment and landlords hold all the cards. This isn't "don't buy a bad product that isn't that important", it's "don't have shelter". There isn't enough housing and the poorer get utterly shafted, and stuff like this just makes it even worse.

Legal protections are necessary - that's the entire point of law, to protect those who the system won't.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you mean only black people are pimps and rappers? Now who's the bigot?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Registered Coward v2]

The problem with bringing up terms like "legally defend" is the fact that it's going to cost someone money to do so. And likely more than they can afford

Since the is the UK, US law clearly ins't applicable; however, in the US using such a service and then denying a tenant a lease would probably open up a landlord to a Fair Housing Act violation. Such lawsuits can be lucrative enough to warrant a contingency fee lawsuit.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Registered Coward v2]

It's too bad most don't give a shit about privacy anymore.

Reminds me of the mid 90s and BBSs... you NEVER gave your real name out, or your photo (it would've taken forever anyway)

Then look at how things are today...

I really miss the 90's. I hate having to give my real name, Attila Thehun, to every website where I create an account.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[TroII]

Once a criminal serves their time in prison, or more likely are simply released with a caution or ASBO, they are Reformed. They will be good for their entire life, so landlords and the like have no right to know whether their would-be tenant blew up his last two apartments and left meth-lab chemicals saturating the walls to neighboring units.

So your preferred alternative is that once released, this person should be marked for life, and no one will ever rent to them again? You enjoy having a large homeless population in your city, do you?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[myowntrueself]

What does that mean? A landlord can't turn someone down without having to give a legal and adequate reason? Could a landlord have to defend a rejection of a tenant, in court?

What if they rejected someone because they were black? Or gay? Or muslim?

Has to be a legal and adequate reason because you can't just trust people to be reasonable. They have to be bullied into being reasonable by the state, according to state-defined legal definitions of 'reasonable'. Right.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[myowntrueself]

NO business would "chew their arm off" to use this if the end result was no new customers

When your potential customers like to set up meth labs or are just generally scummy assholes that will have no regard for your property or other residents, yeah, they would.

Yeah or gay, or muslims. I think you can see where this is going.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[rickb928]

In American, yes, a landlord could be sued and have to defend their choice.

And I am a landlord. I don't ask questions that aren't

0. Necessary - marital status, sex/gender, sexual orientation for instance.
1. Legally permitted - sexual orientation, family status (children, marital status), physical handicaps, education, citizenship (as in whether they are a citizen anywhere, since it is legally murky in Arizona to ask if they are in the US legally).

I do ask some questions that are interesting and may some day be illegal:

0. Criminal record excepting traffic and civil actions with one exception noted below.
1. Pets expected to reside with the applicant.
2. Employment, basic info without salary/pay details.
3. Prior evictions (questions about prior disputes with landlords are not permitted, so far as I know).

I rent regularly to people with felonies, as most complexes refuse to, and do not pull a credit check, as we usually have multiple applicants and any flags on the application would make them second or lower choices. And I regularly rent to first-timers who have little success with the complexes. And my tenants sign a 'crime-free addendum' the local police recommend, legally permitting me to evict them with 3 days' notice if the police respond to criminal complaints, or anyone is arrested on the premises, or the police inform me that known convicts are found on the premises during an investigation. Intended to put a stop to absent landlords ignoring drug and gang activity, which is a problem here as this community is a gang hangout since at least the 80s. So far I have not had to invoke it, and it has saved one tenant from difficulty saying 'no' to friends needing a place to crash and do their illegal business. One such 'friend' called me to complain. I asked that one to wait while I conferenced in the local police substation so they could further explain the addendum. Click.

It's not that hard to be a landlord. But common sense goes a long ways, Who your tenants sleep with or how they dress doesn't mean anything. Whether they can earn money to pay the rent, and if they can avoid burning the place down, or if they import their drug sales business, those things matter.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Entrope]

Yes, that is what "ban the box" is about. Ask these people what policies they push.

Ban-the-box laws typically make it illegal for employers to inquire about an applicant's criminal history before an interview or job offer (the details about which one varies by state; the activist group I linked to above wants to only allow it after a conditional job offer is made). They limit the kind or age of convictions that can be considered, and the categories of employers or where convictions can be considered at all. States like Hawaii (the first state to ban the box for both public and private employers) also prohibit consideration of arrests and other parts of a criminal record beyond convictions.

"Ban the box" absolutely is about putting strict limits on what employers can do with criminal record checks.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

You overestimate criminals. There are plenty of meth cooks who wouldn't think twice about discussing meth in a Facebook message.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Lose argument? Use Ad-hom, the premier bullshit non-argument for retards of all sizes!

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

You prejudiced racist bigot. Why do you assume that only blacks can be pimps or rappers?
In reality, the vast majority of people involved in the prostitution industry, as pimps or hookers, are poor whites. Despite that, you immediately jump to the conclusion that "pimps" = "blacks" because your own racism is so deeply ingrained that you cannot even think that a black person might not be a druggie or a whore.
White rappers include massive superstars like Eminem, Beastie Boys, and Vanilla Ice. But again, you are so racist that you can't disassociate blacks from rap. In your mind, all blacks are rapping, drug dealing, pimps and whores.

People like you disgust me.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[LunaticTippy]

I've liked most of my roommates, whatever their ethnicity, but my very worst roommate was a Caucasian rapper. He would freestyle in his room at all hours - it was awful and distracting and embarrassing. I'd have a young lady over, putting my clumsy moves on and he'd be shouting about how disrespectful he was towards women in his fake hood accent. He was painfully privileged, white, suburban. He was a total wannabe thug, posed with guns and stuff like that. He got busted for knocking over a liquor store and when they were hauling him off to his arraignment he broke away from the guards and jumped, handcuffed, to his death in the Santa Barbara courthouse.

I felt pretty guilty about it because I spent so many sleepless nights fervently hoping he would die. I know it wasn't my fault but I still feel guilty about it.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[St.Creed]

Sorry, but this is why criminal background checks, credit checks, and deposits exist. I highly doubt social media sleuthing is going to flush out a meth dealer. Regardless, the answer here isn't to treat everyone like a criminal. The answer here is harsher punishments against actual criminals.

Not sure about GB, but criminal background checks are inaccessible to any but law enforcement, over here. Credit checks? Only if you're a bank and it is your customer. Otherwise, not a chance. Deposits are limited by law to at most three months of rent.

A co-worker's girlfriend moved in with him and rented out her appartment at first because you never know. After a year it turned out the renter had installed a weed plantation. She was liable for criminal charges, damages, stolen electricity, etc. etc. - totalling around 30.000 euro. She's still trying to pay it back, about a decade later.

In a situation such as in Amsterdam, where there are a lot more customers than houses and appartments, combined with criminals trying to rent houses to turn into weed plantations, this *will* be used.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[St.Creed]

Good idea - an employer should not be prying into whether someone has ever been convicted for something unrelated to their current job. They should, however, be able to ask the police if there was any record that had bearing on the job at hand. A simple "yes" or "no" would be pretty helpful without sacrificing privacy.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Aerokii]

I'm not sure you understand what an ad-hominem is, since this doesn't qualify. You could potentially argue false equivalency, but I actually happen to agree with them, so eh.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Extrajudicial punishment is not the answer. If your criminal justice system is insufficient to keep threats off the street, reform it.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume that only blacks can be pimps or rappers?

GP didn't say that, did he?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Jiro]

And my tenants sign a 'crime-free addendum' the local police recommend, legally permitting me to evict them with 3 days' notice if the police respond to criminal complaints, or anyone is arrested on the premises, or the police inform me that known convicts are found on the premises during an investigation.

This is terrible. It leads to victims of domestic violence being evicted because of their partner committing a crime against them.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself, my name IS L0psicle.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[rickb928]

No it does not. It also requires tenants to either report crimes or cooperate with the police. If my tenant has an RO against their partner or anyone, they are expected to report violations. If the RO is against a fellow tenant, that requires me to evict the transgressor. And for me to cooperate with the police.

Sadly, the only instance where that was the issue, the loss of income cost me all the tenants. They had to move in with family.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

As a small time landlord ( 2 duplexes) I rented to a black guy with a criminal record once. By all accounts he was gettin his shit together and paid his dues. He was a manager at local goodwill and trying to pay it foraward. He was one of the cleanest tenants i ever had and I actually really liked him.

5 months into a 1 year lease he dissappeared.... I found out he went back to jail for a minor parol violation. I was stuck with with his stuff in my place, no real recourse with the lease (due to local laws). I was freaking out regarding what to do, because im not rich and cant afford to eat monthly morgage payments. Luckily after speaking to some lawyers and drafting a documents stating that he had abondoned the place. I had to visit the prison he was in, get him to sign it and then get his brother to clean the place out.

It was a nightmare. It stressed me out, my family out, and we were close to skipping morgage payments. I guess in short. What I'm trying to say is I would rent to a black guy no problem. I would not rent to a guy who is still embroiled in the criminal system, no matter how much he paid his dues and is trying to start over.

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Blue Stone]

I can forsee a world where everyone has an official Facebook/Twitter/social media account and a real one, so you can give access to the official one to scumbag companies like this.

And then shortly thereafter an official one, a dummy real one and then the *real* real one: give them access to the offical one, then the dummy real one (slightly more 'gritty' and believeable) when they say 'oh, we know this is fake, give us the real one'.

What they do to people who say thet don't do social media, I do not know. Straight-up deny service?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

One would hope that facebook would realize what these guys are up to and deny them access to their services.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Entrope]

Who determines what convictions are related to the job someone is applying for? The police? They're not going to understand the details of the job or the applicant's history and current situation. They're not going to take responsibility for answering that yes/no question wrong. The authority to answer that question needs to stay with the responsibility for answering it incorrectly.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[St.Creed]

I've actually had to deal with this procedure as it is quite standard in the Netherlands - at least for my job which usually involves handling financial and/or confidential information.

The employer has to describe the function and add some additional information about whether the person involved has to handle money, or works with kids, or vulnerable minors, or with confidential information. This is detailed in a number of boxes and you'd better not hand in a form with false answers as this is fraud. The police will then determine, based on the records of the person involved, if there have been crimes or misdemeanors related to the job and the specifics given on the form. If yes, you will get a statement on watermarked paper called a "declaration about behaviour". If there are issues, you don't get one.

If you are convicted of fraud, but want to work with children, and don't get to work handling financial information, you will get a declaration. If you want to work in finance and you've been convicted of rape, no problem. But getting a job as a nurse or pediatrician would probably be difficult.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Howitzer86]

You should consider taking a critical look at your own thought process, specifically, analyze why you would come to this conclusion despite the plethora of context (and even my own post history) that would suggest the opposite of your conclusion.

At best, you can say that I'm wrong for assuming that's what the landlord meant, but accusing me of being a white supremacist is ludicrous, for many reasons, including a big one which I won't spell out for you lest I be accused of pulling some sort of card.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[Howitzer86]

The anonymous coward who said it?

Re:landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[zentigger]

I don't know about the UK, but In Canada private investigators need a license. This definitely fits the definition:

“private investigator” means a person who investigates and furnishes information for hire or reward, including a person who
(i) searches for and furnishes information as to the personal character or actions of a person, or the character or kind of business or occupation of a person...

Please help --

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night, my trailer was burglarized and my VCR was stolen. It's a JVC HR-VP59U, S/N 117090. If you see this, please call the Mobile, AL police department @ 251.208.1890. It's probably at a pawn shop.

Thank you.

Re:Please help --

[Dunbal]

No, it's probably in a museum.

Re:Please help --

[__aaclcg7560]

And still flashing 12:00:00.

It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give it to them, let the landlords that use the service become bankrupt if they insist. It's only because of weaklings that the privacy invasion happens.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a shortage of housing in the UK. Not enough homes are being built to cover the rising demands.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Tricky in the uk the current government has engeineered an intentional housing and renting bubble over 10% faster than wages. Which has been exaggerated by Chinese/russian magnates buying property just as an investment. If enough landlords like it you wont have a choice

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's only because of weaklings that the privacy invasion happens.

I'd like to see you scrambling between unemployment and a precarious job, competing with 100 folks to get a place to stay, each one waving their CV and job contract.

You're an idiot.

Re: It's simple

[jonnyj]

So here's the issue.

Landlords face real financial costs from tenants who don't pay their rent, who damage the rental property, or who are a problem to their neighbours. The vast majority of well behaved tenants subsidise the bad guys.

If you're a decent tenant and you can demonstrate that you're unlikely to cause problems to the landlord, you should be able to procure higher quality housing, have more choice of properties, enjoy lower costs or maybe a mixture of all three. If you are unable or unwilling to demonstrate good character, you'll have to continue to subsidise the bad guys.

There's a price to pay for privacy. Some people will pay it - and it's not your or my right to cast moral judgement on their decision.

Re:It's simple

[RogueyWon]

It's trickier than that in the UK. Demand for housing, even rental housing, currently outstrips supply in much of the country (certainly in the parts with major economic activity where people want to live). Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform.

Alongside this, we've seen a huge rise in the buy-to-let market. The media focus tends to be on Russian/Chinese oligarchs buying up central London housing, but in reality, this impact of this is largely dwarfed by the armies of baby-boomers who, spurred on by various cultural and economic factors, have decided to invest in buying properties to rent out instead of more traditional pensions/savings/investments. There have been some recent efforts by Government to stem this tide, but it's too soon for them to have had any real effect.

The end result of all this is that getting a place to live in a good chunk of the UK is now an undignified scramble. Even grotty rental places often only remain available for a few hours and are the subject of unseemly (and sometimes illegal) bidding wars between potential tenants.

The startup described in TFA sounds, to be blunt, illegal. I cannot possibly see how what they are doing complies with the data protection act and the degree of coverage they're getting makes me suspect that they will be flipped from start-up to close-down quite quickly. That said, somebody will probably tweak the model to comply with the relevant laws and come back with it in a few months time.

My own solution to this kind of thing is fairly simple. I have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but there is absolutely nothing on there that does not need to be on there. These exist purely so that I have something that I can put down on forms for job applications etc. They have some professional biographical information, a few links to the profiles of colleagues who have created profiles for the same purposes (and have similarly bland, corporate profiles) and nothing else. I have no "personal" account on these sites as I feel no need to broadcast my life and I would not touch Twitter with a shitty stick.

So yeah... you want access to my Facebook and LinkedIn, go ahead. Trust me, they have an anaesthetic effect.

Re: It's simple

[Sique]

So you say that breaking at least four contracts (the Terms of Service of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter forbid exactly what Score Assured demands) is a way to demonstrate "good character"?

Re: It's simple

[jonnyj]

It maybe a technicality, but the terms of service for those websites are unlikely to be regarded as a contract under UK law. We require consideration to pass from both parties before a contract is valid, and it's hard to see what co side ration is given by a user of a free website.

That's not to say that terms of service have no legal force, but they're very unlikely to be subject to the law of contract.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Only weaklings have trouble finding jobs or flats to rent.

Re: It's simple

[Salgak1]

. . .And providing a service does not count as consideration ? Interesting. . .

Re: It's simple

[squiggleslash]

Use of the website without charge is the consideration.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

No, here's the issue: private landlords are useless leeches. Let non-profits and local government provide rental housing - this worked excellently in the UK through the early '80s, but nobody made money from it, so the Conservative government required the sell-off of houses to tenants.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking shit. Both sides get consideration within the contract.

Many terms in EULAs would likely be unenforceable under UK law due to unreasonable contract laws. Not being able to give out your account details would be very much enforceable.

I suspect knowingly encouraging people to break their contract obligations would be illegal under some tort law, but IANAL and I am unsure on that.

Re:It's simple

[JaredOfEuropa]

As a landlord, I'd welcome any service that lets me vet renters before I enter into a contract with them. I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property, and in the Netherlands there's always the danger of a tenant going to the rent control committee and getting their rent lowered to the point where I start losing money (governments expects homeowners and landlords to pay market prices for their properties, yet magically provide low income tenants with apartments at rents well below market or even break-even levels. A "decree economy" at its finest, but of course in practise it doesn't work that way).

With that said, I do not in the slightest expect this service to yield any form of useful info from tenants' social media data. I do things the old fashioned way, by doing an interview and going by gut feeling.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

QUACK
The Free Market will solve this problem. /QUACK

This response was automatically generated. No intelligent thought required or desired.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Consideration does not have to be monetary. For example, in the case of the four web sites you mentioned, the service of storing and distributing the user's information is providing something of value to the user.

Re: It's simple

[zabbey]

Someone on the internet espousing the virtues of the TERMS OF SERVICE?! Oh, man, I needed a good laugh this morning. Most computer users have been knowingly and unknowingly violating the TERMS OF SERVICE since commercial software came into existence.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What is worrying me is that I can't immediately see why this would be illegal under current data protection law in England and Wales, because it appears that the prospective tenant is giving their explicit consent to processing the data. Even with sensitive personal data (with the Data Protection Act meaning of the term, i.e., politics, religion and the like) having explicit consent turns off a lot of legal safeguards the subject would otherwise enjoy.

I completely agree with everyone saying this is shady as hell, but since private landlords also have no obligation to offer accommodation to any particular individual, if they all start using this sort of system I don't see that there's much tenants can do about it. They can try to find alternative accommodation that doesn't come with the same intrusion, but that could be difficult in some areas due to the shortage of decent housing, as others have mentioned. They could lobby for better regulation, but historically that has not been very successful in reigning in abusive landlords and the letting agencies they hide behind.

Unless there is a credible case that landlords have made decisions based on personal data that they aren't allowed to consider under anti-discrimination laws or something along those lines, which does seem to make it unwise for this spyware company to pass on that sort of data to landlords in the first place, I'm not sure what there is to actually stop this as the law stands today.

Re: It's simple

[Sique]

Of course this is a contract. One side presents its conditions to provide a service (the Terms of Service), and the other side agrees to the conditions by signing up. That is a valid contract at face value. It still might be that parts of the Terms of Service are considered unenforceable or violating the law, but until that happens, the contract stands as agreed upon by the service provicer by providing the service and the user by using it.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

...I do things the old fashioned way, by doing an interview and going by gut feeling.

So, no use of simple logic to check for criminal background or credit rating. How's that working out for ya?

... I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property...

Ah, I see.

Re:It's simple

[Xest]

"Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform."

I don't think that's entirely fair, part the problem is that there are massive amounts of disused brownfield territory, but developers, despite making absolutely massive profits given the money in the housing market currently, have been lobbying to destroy greenfield natural sites to build upon, because it's cheaper for them than knocking down old disused buildings, or ripping up old foundations, pipework etc. from disused ex-industrial sites.

The fact is that there is more than enough disused brownfield land to solve for the UK's housing crisis many times over. People aren't rejecting building on greenfield sites because of NIMBYism, they're rejecting it because it's simply unnecessary and because people would rather see ghastly unused ex-industrial areas turned into shiny new housing developments than they would pristine natural areas turned into shiny new housing developments.

I don't think we should be destroying our argicultural and natural landscapes just because it's cheaper for property developers to build on fresh land than it is to tidy up old industrial areas. If we allow them to do that then we still end up with tatty old industrial areas that look awful, bring down the value of an area, and increase crime as a result whilst destroying nice argicultural or recreational area needlessly.

I think most people would be more than happy with building on these old sites, because it raises the value of an area for people already living around. It's win-win for everyone except property developers who make on slightly less massive profits.

This isn't to say that there aren't legislative changes that can be made to improve the housing situation, there are, an obvious one being that anyone not using land they own that is disused but could be regenerated sould be forced to sell it of or regenerate it themselves rather than sit on it simply in the hope of profiting off the increases in land value at some arbitrary point in the future even though it adds to the artificial land scarcity and brings down the value of an area, but we don't need to make it easier to build on green belt, we already have way more than enough unprotected land to satisfy the country's building needs long into the future. We just need to make sure it's used sensibly.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how government works. Creates a problem, creates a solution to that problem, which creates another problem, and on and on it goes.

Re:It's simple

[queBurro]

It's trickier than that in the UK. Demand for housing, even rental housing, currently outstrips supply in much of the country (certainly in the parts with major economic activity where people want to live). Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform...

That's not true anymore and hasn't been since about 2010 when the last coalition government introduced the concept of "localism" whereby locals, rather than planning officers, had the power to grant or stop new developments. In practice, this meant that a bunch of OAPs on the parish council were pitted against speculative developers' legal teams and has resulted in a massive increase in new housing development. But, this development is not the "cheap" housing that's arguably required for people to get on the property ladder, but "high profit" housing that makes these private development companies the most money. Obviously they want to make as much money as possible. They 'are' required to build a percentage of "affordable" housing, but this is defined as housing with a cost of less than 80% of the other (high price/profit) properties in the development. The result being that the poor can't 'afford' affordable housing.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends how it's done. If they require your login then yes. If it's done as an app that gets granted access to all that data, then it's probably okay.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the UK's "Data Protection Act" of 1984, you are entitled to request a full copy of all electronic and digital records held about you. A request can be made in writing along with the required format storage type (legible true-color printouts, DVD or CD disk) and a payment of £10. Failure to comply will give you the right to take a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner.

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/make-a-complaint

Re:It's simple

[Xest]

"What is worrying me is that I can't immediately see why this would be illegal under current data protection law in England and Wales"

There are two reasons, first, that I have covered elsewhere, is that they're providing a credit score. This is a regulated industry by the FCA, and they're not registered as a financial services company with the FCA for this purpose. Registering imposes certain requirements on them, such as being able to justify how they came to a credit score. If they're using artificial intelligence/statistical techniques as they claim to determine credit score from social media data then it's near impossible to fulfil this obligation because retracing how and why such systems came up with the score they did on an individual basis is damn near impossible, it just doesn't give the auditability required for FCA compliance, and they're not FCA registered anyway.

From a non-financial aspect in terms of the DPA, the DPA states that an organisation cannot capture more data than is necessary for the purposes of their business. Given that their business is effectively evaluating people by capturing social media data, and that some of that data will be inherently irrelevant to determining trust, but that they're relying on statistical algorithms to figure out which data is and isn't valid, as well as including data that they're simply not even legally allowed to use as a determination (gender, sex, sexuality) then it seems pretty clear that they're not in compliance with the DPA. Perhaps most damingly is the fact that upon loading a post onto their own systems, or a picture, they may be capturing data of other people. If a person being evaluated posts "£50k to blow at Joe Bloggs 30th Birthday on Friday!" then they've already taken data illegaly about Joe Bloggs - his name, his birthday, and his age. No individual can ever give permission to a company to harvest another individual's data in this way.

The reason the big boys in this industry haven't done any of this is precisely because it's an unnavigable minefield. When you start introducing non-deterministic algorithms into the fray, with data that can be so arbitrary such as social media posts, there is absolutely no way whatsoever you can guarantee that your system is not going to discriminate based on sex, race, religion, and so on and so forth. It only takes one case where someone suggests that their race, or sex, or sexuality or similar has been taken into account creating bias in the outcome, for that data to be stored on the company's system (which it is, see the example profile) and for the company not to be able to prove otherwise for the whole system to be shut down as non-compliant and for a fine to be issued.

You're right in that there's nothing to stop an organisation harvesting data about an individual that they've been given permission to harvest by that individual, but as soon as you start doing evaluation on that data in a non, or effectively non-deterministic manner, and when that data can include personal information about others then you're going to cross the line.

But again, in this case, they've outright failed on their FCA obligations alone before you even factor that in so regardless this company is not fulfilling their legal obligations.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

The government reduced savings interest rates to 0.00001% in order to relieve the burden on those in debt. But it had the side effect of eliminating any incentive to save money in a bank, so everyone with money invested in property instead. For pensioners, having interest from their savings meant they had money to spend in the high-street shops. No interest payments has meant that the high-street shops like Woolworths and BHS go bankrupt.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a bigger problem if someone doesn't have a place to live when there is an empty place waiting for someone to move into, if I was homeless I would squat an empty house and then no one gets paid any money if I couldn't find a place. Sorry there is finite land in the world, if nobody will let me use what they have to live on, then I will have to take the land anyway I can, this is how nature works, a fight for resources, be thankful at the end of the day the resources still belong to you.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't live in a shitty socialist country where your renters can demand (and get!) lower rents through force.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It will. Fake facebook/twitter profiles can be purchased or created in reponse to this.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

[T]hey're providing a credit score. This is a regulated industry by the FCA, and they're not registered as a financial services company with the FCA for this purpose.

Interesting. That looks like a credible way to go after them if they pursue this, independent of the general data protection rules.

From a non-financial aspect in terms of the DPA, the DPA states that an organisation cannot capture more data than is necessary for the purposes of their business.

Indeed, but in this case if the purpose is to evaluate the prospective tenant's trustworthiness based on their social media activity and they've given their explicit consent for that to happen, it seems optimistic to assume the DPA prohibits such activity. This feels like something you'd need a court case to determine with certainty.

No individual can ever give permission to a company to harvest another individual's data in this way.

I'd like to think that was the case, and as I read the law it always seemed to be. However, it makes me wonder how social media apps get away with harvesting their users' entire phone/address books, services like Google Mail get away with scanning mails sent to one of their users by another party who doesn't know Google is involved, and so on. Plenty of big IT companies seem to be doing things like this routinely, and the regulators don't seem to be objecting much so far, much as some of us might wish they would.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't "engineered" any such thing. The housing bubble has been ongoing since 2000, while the current government has been in power since 2010 (being generous there since it was a coalition from 2010-2015). Interest rates have been at "emergency levels" since about 2010 but they aren't even set by the government. Also, housing bubbles exist all over the world right now. It's not just the UK, not even close.

That, and the current government couldn't "engineer" a piss-up in a brewery.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

The law may be fairly clear on the illegality of their "service", but the politics aren't. If they can become popular enough fast enough with the landlords, then they'll have a powerful lobbying group on their side. And politics trumps law, damn near every time.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Members of the legislature of all parties in the UK use property investment as a means to secure continual income once they cease to get elected. They have no motivation to put a lid on property price bubble.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give it to them, let the landlords that use the service become bankrupt if they insist. It's only because of weaklings that the privacy invasion happens.

When you're desperate to find a place to live, you really don't have much choice. Sign the agreement and hope for the best, or else you are living on the street and and everything you own is sitting on the curb.

Re: It's simple

[FudRucker]

a credit report and police record would be more appropriate, looking at the garbage people post on facebook wont always reflect the true nature of people because facebook is mostly alter-ego drivel

Re: It's simple

[Sique]

The Terms of Service of Facebook counts several acts which are forbidden:

1. Giving the password away.
2. Giving the developer credentials away.
3. Having other persons access your profile.
4. Perform other acts which may compromise the security of your account.

Thus, even if you don't give the password to Source Assured and just enter it in the app which never sends it out, it would still be a violation of the contract, because other persons have full access to your profile via the app.

Re: It's simple

[future assassin]

You've seen nothing till you see Vancouver BC and Fraser Valley BC area housing bubble. Fucking insane.

Re:It's simple

[Computershack]

There is a shortage of housing in the UK. Not enough homes are being built to cover the rising demands.

Actually there isn't a shortage of housing in the UK at all, merely a shortage of housing in areas of high demand. Overall there's enough property to house everyone. Where the shortage of housing is is in London and within commuting distance. Same story with unaffordable housing. Within 25 miles of where I live there are thousands of houses someone on a minimum wage job could buy for a 3.5x income multiplier mortgage with a deposit equivalent to the price of a cheap second hand car.

Re:It's simple

[Xest]

"I'd like to think that was the case, and as I read the law it always seemed to be. However, it makes me wonder how social media apps get away with harvesting their users' entire phone/address books"

There isn't really one answer, the answers range from them being covered by data processor sections of the DPA, through to them simply breaking the law but having not been challenged.

I hate using the term Right to be Forgotten, because that's a provision of the updated Data Protection Directive, but if you look at Google's Right to be Forgotten case what that is really when you cut away all the bullshit and propaganda is the fact that Google has simply breached the Data Protection Directive (the Data Protection Act in the UK) - this is effectively exactly what you're talking about, by harvesting personal data Google is in breach of the Data Protection Act, but this is an act that's been around since Google's birth, so why now? Simply because only recently did it ever make it to court. Google has never been DPA compliant on this front, so it's been breaking the law for what, 15 years or so? but nothing happens until a complaint is lodged. Regardless of whether it's good or bad (that's not what I'm trying to debate here regarding the right to be forgotten case as it's incorrectly called) the point was always that Google was harvesting personal data that it simply had no legal defence for collecting. So hopefully that explains simply why the regulators haven't acted against things that seem illegal - they simply just wont until they're forced to by a complaint. This isn't always entirely their fault to be fair, some regulators have it in their mandate that they're only there to be reactive to complaints and not to proactively seek problems, others feel they only have the budget to deal with complaints reactively, and others are just simply incompetent. I don't know which excuse of these the UK's ICO has to be honest.

Aside from outright illegality that simply hasn't been dealt with by regulators, there's the aformentioned data processing laws. In data protection parlance, someone who obtains data originally and owns it is called a data controller (they must of course collect it legally), these data controllers can in strict circumstances pass the data on to 3rd parties without you having any relationship with or giving permission to those third parties for processing purposes. So for example, you may apply for a mortgage, you give the bank your personal details, but say the bank doesn't do the mortgage decision making themselves, say they outsource that, then they may legally be able to pass it to the mortgage decision company for processing without you ever knowing. The restrictions are that the data controller is still legally responsible for the data (i.e. it's security, correctness etc.), the data processor may only use the data for the agreed processing and must delete it when finished, and may not pass it on to anyone else or use it in any other way.

In terms then of how things like automatic phone book uploads work, effectively what's happening here is that your friend gives you their phone number, you are then the data controller, you've been given that data for the purpose of being able to store it and find it when you need to. When you agree to upload it to Google or Facebook's services you're effectively contracting out to them as data processors, such that they're offering to help you store, and help you find this number as and when they need it. That's why this is legal, but here's where social networks could, and probably have (even if not prosecuted) fallen foul of the law - if they start using those phone numbers for any other reason than simply storing them and helping you find them then they're breaking their obligations as a data processor. In theory you could also be held liable because you're the DC but in practice there will be no public interest in punishing you as a private citizen for trusting a large company, but there will be public interest in charging the company.

B

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm not so sure. Housing is one of those issues that isn't quite big enough to sway elections yet, but it's painful for a lot of people in the UK at the moment, and the government has essentially been propping up house prices by artificially limiting the market for years. Now they've backed themselves into a corner, because so many older voters have houses and possibly second buy-to-let houses that they want to keep the values up, but younger generations are already completely priced out of the market in some places. As more of those younger people become active voters, it's going to become more difficult for the government to continue propping up the relatively well-off property owners anyway, and supporting this sort of obviously creepy move is just a needless political risk from their point of view.

Re: It's simple

[Khyber]

"It maybe a technicality, but the terms of service for those websites are unlikely to be regarded as a contract under UK law."

That won't matter. Facebook can sue the fuck out of ScoreAssured in the USA under various treaties the UK and US have with each other.

And your UK doesn't have any kind of money to stop Facebook from yanking those fuckers right over here and financially breaking their asses for good.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing is, while I've heard the kind of argument you make there before and it looks reasonable on the face of it, ultimately that entire argument is based on the idea that individuals can freely collect personal information about other individuals they know. Obviously it would be both undesirable and impractical to require every individual to register as a data controller and document every kind of personal data they ever came across about their friends or professional contacts, so whatever sort of implicit permission is involved it must be given or the whole legal foundation becomes silly. But then there's nothing to say explicitly where that permission does or doesn't end, and that creates huge grey areas in the kind of situation we're talking about.

To me, it seems obviously counter to the spirit of the data protection rules that large data harvesting organisations can entice someone who is being trusted with someone else's personal data in that way to hand over that data, often on terms that aren't fully understood, for purposes that aren't fully described, and quite possibly without even the knowledge of the actual data subject. There really ought to be some absolutely clear rules, with meaningful penalties for violation, about organisations collecting personal data from people about third parties, including both reasonable disclosure requirements to the people providing that data and hard limits beyond which the actual data subjects must give their explicit consent and no-one else can give it for them.

The difficulty with this is that some of these large data-harvesting organisations can now do so much with even tiny data points, because of the scale they operate at and the number of connected data points they have access to, that I'm starting to think any processing of data about third parties should be limited to temporary analysis for some specific purpose (such as checking whether any of the friends in your address book are already on a social network you're joining) with no permanent storage of data specifically about anyone else, and with a requirement that no processing is done in regard to any data incidentally collected about third parties, such as a friend who appears in a holiday photo you upload. It's the scale and co-ordination of all these modern systems that poses the biggest threats to privacy these days, but our laws data from a time when it was assumed the individual data points were what mattered.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

And my life as an honest decent tenant has been ruined by several bad landlords over the last few years. There's no way in hell they'll ever give me access to their online presence before I decide to accept the property. Why should I be forced to do so?

Tenancy laws in the UK are massively stacked in the landlord's favour, although the arseholes always scream about how hard done they are. I had a landlord a few years ago illegally evict me with leased than a quarter of the notice required by law because I was to busy to drop everything with an hour's notice and come meet her in there other side of town. She also stole the fridge I brought to the property. I could have taken her to court but I needed somewhere to live immediately and u needed a reference from her for the next place. I have several other examples of terrible landlords, but for some reason it's the tenants who are required to bend over backwards and take whatever crap the landlord feels like throwing their way. I went to rent a new property recently and the prospective landlord has the cheek to ask if my toddler was potty trained for fucks sake. She's not a fucking pet!

Re: It's simple

[LynnwoodRooster]

Meanwhile the Silicon Valley people just quietly chuckle over others talking about real estate bubbles...

Re:It's simple

[jareth-0205]

Don't give it to them, let the landlords that use the service become bankrupt if they insist. It's only because of weaklings that the privacy invasion happens.

Weaklings, or those that NEED FUCKING HOUSING and don't have anywhere else to go. Seriously, can you not take a moment to imagine what it's like to be someone with less purchasing power than you? It's really not that hard. This isn't a case of moral fibre, it's a colossal problem of providing enough housing for people, and the power that that gives those that provide housing.

Re:It's simple

[jareth-0205]

As a landlord, I'd welcome any service that lets me vet renters before I enter into a contract with them.

Maybe you'd like to setup cameras in their current house too so you can find out when they're doing something that you disapprove of?

While I get that you'd like to vet people, there's a level of risk that you must take as a landlord to respect the private life of your tenants. This is invasive and wrong.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the NIMBY for new developments is that the developments never seem to get supporting infrastructure. So locally people are fighting a build of up to 1000 new houses, largely because the main route into town is already at a standstill for hours every rush hour. My commute is 11 miles and it's gone up from 20 minutes to 40 in the ten years I've had the job. Without better roads, 1000 new houses would bring the area to a halt. Not to mention schools, hospitals and other services.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you give access to your private info to prospective tenants so they can check you're not an evil nightmare to rent from? I'd bet no, but you expect that from the people who buy your 'service'

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

. I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property,

Harsh words for someone who is entirely and economic deadbeat themselves.
Landlords add no value, contribute nothing to productivity, and exist only to make property markets and housing dysfunctional, expensive, and the single largest contribution to eroding competitiveness.

Since the introduction of buy-to-lets and ultra-low interest rates, it's safe to say that the Soviet Union ran a better housing policy than most western states nowadays. When the money runs out, I'd prefer to be long gone from the "private" rental sector.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

yet magically provide low income tenants with apartments at rents well below market or even break-even levels

Maybe you should check if the government compensation programs cover the lower rents. Social, zoning and other programs related to the use of private property and land always contain the compensation program for the owners. If they don't, somebody is acting against their constitution and your fundamental rights.

Re:It's simple

[Xest]

Data controllers don't require registration, anyone who collects personal data automatically becomes a data controller.

"But then there's nothing to say explicitly where that permission does or doesn't end, and that creates huge grey areas in the kind of situation we're talking about."

I see this sort of comment a lot on Slashdot, but I think Slashdot with it's large technical crowd is often guilty of seeing things too logically, and too binary because it's ultimately in our nature with what we do. The reality is quite different, law and law making have many grey areas, and judges and juries do often have to engage in decision making that isn't defined by perfect logical inference. I actually learnt something of this when I was, randomly (don't ask) watching a debate about pesticide laws and the banning of imidacloprid, a form of neonicotinoid. There was an argument that the problem with it is that it was potentially responsible for the decline of bees across Europe, and as such a temporary ban across Europe should be put in place to see if it imporves thing. That was largely agreeable in itself as an interim test, but much of the dispute came from questions about amateur gardens who depend on it for pest control, there aren't really any other equivalently effective systemic inseciticides and that could mean a blight across Europe for amateur gardeners who don't use it in sufficient quantities to cause damage as farmers do, so they decided to try and define exceptions to the ban to allow this use - i.e. it can only be sold in bottles upto 500ml - but what if farmers still just buy bulk lots and use it anyway?, or it can only be used in private gardens - but what if farmers just declare their field their garden?, or it can only be used in non-commercial settings - but what about garden centres trying to keep their stock protected?, or it can only be used in areas smaller than 500m^2 - but what if farmers just claim to sub-divide their fields?... and on, and on, and on. The end result was that exceptions were unworkable, and could always be exploited by farmers trying to flout the ban, and so it was recognised that the only option was to pass the law with no exceptions, but compel national governments to only enforce it when it was in their own judgement being done on a harmful scale. So what's the moral of the story here? the moral is that contrary to my long held belief that the law was a logical, firmly defined thing, that that's simply not the case, the law regularly has to deal with fringe cases, and it always becomes a judgement call at that point. This is why sometimes the law is just outright unfair, but there's no better alternative, because to cover every fringe case you have to write more law, but when you write more law you create more loopholes, and you can just never win - look at tax law, it's often claimed it's too complex, but it's complex to cover fringe cases that companies wanted, but then those fringe cases are poured over to find tax loopholes and it becomes a wholly self-defeating exercise.

So my point here is that I think it's wrong to think that the law ever can or will define everything perfectly such that outcomes can be decided purely on consistent and exact logical reasoning, reality is inevitably going to require judgement calls to be made at some point, mostly I think the UK's judicial system is independent and smart enough to do a good job of this, but sometimes it wont. It's just the unfortunate nature of the beast.

Beyond that though I do agree with everything you say, and whilst I don't think the law can ever be perfect as for above, I do agree that there are ways in which it can be made better. I think it's about precisely targetting law effectively at areas that definietely need clear legislation, whilst getting a fine balance with not leaving the law too wide open to be abused, or to specific to be trivially worked around. Honestly, it's easy to slag politicians off, but watching them in action in actual committee debates where law is actually made (rather th

Re: It's simple

[thegarbz]

So you say that breaking at least four contracts (the Terms of Service of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter forbid exactly what Score Assured demands) is a way to demonstrate "good character"?

Given the content of those contracts I'm going to go with yes. Yes it is.

Re: It's simple

[myowntrueself]

Use of the website without charge is the consideration.

Simple, if you aren't prepared to break the law then you can't rent these apartments!

Clearly the landlords only want people who are willing to break a contract.

Re:It's simple

[myowntrueself]

The startup described in TFA sounds, to be blunt, illegal. I cannot possibly see how what they are doing complies with the data protection act and the degree of coverage they're getting makes me suspect that they will be flipped from start-up to close-down quite quickly. That said, somebody will probably tweak the model to comply with the relevant laws and come back with it in a few months time.

Well obviously the landlords who want to use this service only want tenants who are prepared to break the law and break contracts!

Re:It's simple

[myowntrueself]

As a landlord, I'd welcome any service that lets me vet renters before I enter into a contract with them. I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property

Protip; stay off of your property. That way there'll be one less idiot on it! :P

If you want people who are prepared to break their contract with the social media site (by handing their login details over) then more fool you; someone who is happy to break one contract will be happy to break another!

Re: It's simple

[Mashiki]

You sure about that? $16m property selling for nearly $70m in just under an hour a few weeks ago is just an example. Last year a house in Toronto(under 600sqft) sold for $2m. The median wage is around $70k in Toronto, On., it's $67k in Vancouver, BC.

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

> engeineered an intentional housing and renting bubble over 10% faster than wages.

Never attribute to evil what you may attribute to stupidity, anon.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that if something is more costly for developers it's just going to be more costly to consumers down the road.

Oh? Government subsides you say? Who pays for those again?

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Members of the legislature of all parties in the UK use property investment as a means to secure continual income once they cease to get elected. They have no motivation to put a lid on property price bubble.

The same is true for your average middle class home owner.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Needing housing is a sign of weakness. The strong just take the housing. We don't coddle the weak. Darwin forbids it. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" indeed.

Whether poster is sincere or trolling is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

> Landlords add no value

How DARE people save enough to buy a house and then PRETEND to get some value out of it. The nerve! They should all be savvy businesspersons, risking all their capital in ventures that 5 out of 6 times eventually fail.

In the western world the vast majority of people rent, anon. Whether it be from Ms. Asshole McAssholeface or from The First Bank of Asshole in the form of a 30-40 year loan. The functions of both these landlords is lending capital to people who do not have enough of it. They give you time for you to save up and really own your property.

Personally I recommend people do what I did. Live at your parents and work 2-3 jobs until you have the money to outright buy some property yourself. You might find yourself where I am today, at 47 and renting out 3 flats. One more and I can retire.

Re: It's simple

[Wintermute__]

This site gives some good examples, probably outdated by now:

Crack Shack or Mansion?

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

For what it's worth, I think the problem is often that our lawmakers try to be too specific when legislating in technical fields that (inevitably) most of them don't fully understand. I think sometimes they would do better to write laws that clearly establish the intended principle, and leave applying that principle under specific circumstances to the courts. The trouble is that when they try to get too specific, they wind up creating loopholes, which may then be exploited by lawyers acting for the very people or organisations those laws were intended to restrict.

In some areas, sticking to simpler laws about principles also potentially allows the law to adapt to a changing world more effectively, particularly in fast-moving fields like technology. As I've mentioned previously, I think the problem with a lot of our privacy and data protection laws today is that they were written for a time when collecting a single data point was the big concern, and the focus was on limiting how much data could be collected at that point or how it could be used. Today, with advances in technology, there are also risks to privacy from collecting lots of little data points and then analysing them together, but typically our existing data protection frameworks don't contain any safeguards to protect people from that sort of danger. If you started from more fundamental principles about why privacy is considered important enough to protect in the first place, rather than focussing on specific aspects of collecting, using and sharing personal data, it might be easier to look at new situations and behaviours and decide whether those behaviours are basically fair and reasonable things to do or whether they are in danger of crossing a line and need a closer look.

Re: It's simple

[LynnwoodRooster]

Palo Alto averages over $2 million for homes right now... And you can find those crazy $50 million listings as well. Not to mention this is in US dollars, not the Canadian dollar, so that translates to $2.6 million CAD for the average and into the $70 million CAD range for top listings.

Re:It's simple

[LunaticTippy]

Landlords add great value. They buy properties, often distressed ones, repair and maintain them and provide a desperately needed place to live. They take on a fair amount of risk and make a modest profit. Areas with greater profit potential are generally undesirable areas so it all balances demand.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Then reduce demand. Stop letting all the polacks, gypoes and ayrabs in.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

there's always the danger of a tenant going to the rent control committee and getting their rent lowered to the point where I start losing money

There's always a danger tenants will recognise their legally mandated tenant rights and leave you out of pocket.

FTFY. Remember. The value of your investments may go down as well as up.

Re: It's simple

[DigiShaman]

No it's not. It isn't insane at all. It's the wealthy Chinese parking their money in foreign nations; locking it up tight. Realestate does that. So effectively, when you manufacture and send jobs oversees to nations with dubious governance; that wealth will flee to Western nations thus pricing YOU out of the market where you live. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.

Re: It's simple

[Mashiki]

Only $2m? Average metro vancouver house is in the $2m range these days as well, try not moving to goal posts through. As a reminder, you'll be paying out the ass in taxes, fees, etc here in Canada as well and upwards of 55% of your income will go for taxes right off the bat.

Re: It's simple

[LynnwoodRooster]

And that is different than California? Exceedingly high taxes (13% State income tax for starters, on top of the 15% FICA and ~24% Federal income tax), fees, highest gas taxes in the nation, etc. I know Vancouver is expensive - but California is just as expensive if not more so in many areas. Some cities in California average over $4MM for homes...

Re: It's simple

[Mashiki]

Yep. Federal and provincial taxes for most people top out at 55%, then you add in highest electricity prices in North America, highest property tax prices in Canada, add in 13% HST(sales tax) on all good. In BC it's 7%, toss in the green-tax for gasoline so add another 4-8c/L on top of that. California for isn't isn't paying 0.17kWh for electricity either, but we do in Ontario. Haven't even touched on property taxes, Vancouver you can see upwards of $10k/quarter and in Toronto 7800-15k/quarter isn't uncommon.

Re: It's simple

[LynnwoodRooster]

Wait, Vancouver has the highest electricity prices in North America? According to Hydro Quebec the US is way over anything in Vancouver. I know down here in the Los Angeles area, we pay a bit more than San Francisco, we'd be around 400 on that scale - about 3 times that of Vancouver (around $0.24 USD per kWhr). And property taxes are really high here as well - not to mention the other taxes we get to pay. The cost of living in San Francisco is considerably higher than Vancouver. I think it is a common error for those outside the US to think t is cheap to live here. I've lived abroad a lot (Canada, Belgium, Chile, China, Thailand) and Belgium was the only place I would say was more expensive - and thay by just a hair.

but of course

[elmick]

I don't know if if I've got my old man hat on, or what, but this seems normal. The data is there. Some people would like to get to it. Of course this kind of thing is going to happen. Technically speaking, that is. That submitting to it could somehow be a requirement for getting a job/apartment though is a different story, of course. Hopefully something that can be regulated or managed a bit better, this is a scary road to be going down. There's no stopping technology from getting all up in our lives though. If it's possible, it will likely happen. I'm curious as to when we'll have a real-time view of how many people are alive on the planet at any given moment, with my old man-hat on, I proclaim that moment to be the moment when technology can do so much, we're screwed.

Re:but of course

[Fragnet]

Yours may be. Mine isn't. I have Twitter that isn't "me" (fake name, fake location) and my Facebook consists solely of talk about Rugby Union, that is to say, I have zero "friends" and follow the All Blacks, England, Wallabies, etc. Of course the fact I enjoy Rugby Union would for many be an indication of social class in itself, there's no data on my social media accounts that would tell you anything about me otherwise. I think people who do that are quite stupid.

Re:but of course

[rickb928]

As a landlord, I can't imagine asking applicants for social media access. No good can come of it. None.

Re:but of course

[umghhh]

That something is technically possible does not mean it has to happen or that it will be made legal to happen. There are many techniques to murder people and efficiently dispose of their bodies - yet that is illegal and does not happens much. There are things of course that have been made illegal and they happen on a mass scale anyway (pot smoking etc). Stopping this may be against our nature but this is juts legal and business activity - it can be moderated into something civilized and half way useful without harming too much of our dignity (or what is left of it).

Not normal

[gsslay]

“If you’re living a normal life,” Thornhill reassures me, “then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about.”"

The definition of "normal" is not for this company, or my landlord, to decide.

"Tenant Assured doesn’t give users any way to view their ratings or dispute misleading data."

I think Tenant Assured might find that European law has quite a different view on that.

But I am happy to create an empty Facebook profile and share it with my landlord. I'll even put a post up there about paying my bills on time, and getting an early night. No other data in there? I'm sorry, I don't use Facebook that much, and it's not compulsory to use Twitter, so I don't have anything to share with you there.

Re:Not normal

[Sique]

I guess that there are many other problems Score Assured is facing. I don't know what they mean with "full access to your profile", but for instance, for Facebook this is a breach of contract. The Terms of Service explicitely state in chapter 4.8, that you are not allowed to do so. The other sites have similar rules.

So how long a company will stay afloat whose business it is to get people to violate contracts?

Re: Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

No apartment for you... it shows you've only logged in once.

Re:Not normal

[silentcoder]

>I think Tenant Assured might find that European law has quite a different view on that.

Well it seems rather a lot of British people would love to get European Law to cease mattering in the UK - and I am willing to bet this company and many others like them are really hoping to just avoid prosecution long enough for the referendum to happen and legalize their business. Afterwards, the picture changes, they can actually have laws made to mandate people use them "The landlord protection act of 2017" or some shit because all they would need to do is bribe some David Cameron cronies, a group of people who are imminently bribable and and rather cheaper than those Belgians.

Re:Not normal

[Richard_at_work]

Sod "european law", Britains Data Protection Act already makes this an issue and would continue to do so even in the event of a Leave vote in two weeks time.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, this would not start up in court. Looking at their address on Google Maps also makes me think there are two blokes in a garage with their dog, and the dogs pissed off.

The chances of pig sticker Cameron devoting any time to a new law supporting laws like this if the UK votes to leave EU is about the same chance as me flying to the moon. He will have bigger issues, such as keeping his job, doing a new budget, knifing that cunt Johnson in the back etc etc.

Also don't forget that old white nose Osbourne has just put up the effective tax rate for buy to let landlords to try and take some of the heat out of the UK housing market. I can't see the twats in the Tory party supporting any new law to be honest.

I know some people in the UK press, might make an interesting story once the referendum has been and gone.

Re: Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

Insufficient history. Application denied.

Re:Not normal

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The definition of "normal" is not for this company, or my landlord, to decide.

Yeah, this is extremely chilling.

There are plenty of pictures of me shared all around from various concerts where I've stumbled around in drunken stupors generally being a filthy animal, wearing my finest heavy metal studded/patched denim vest getup. In fact that's probably 90% of what's on my Facebook account, I mostly use it to keep track of who's going to which events.

But I don't bring any of that shit home with me, that's absolutely none of my landlord's business. As far as he's concerned, I have a normal 9-5 job in IT, I'm a member of the board at my apartment complex and I participate in all the social and DIY activities that go on. And that's all he should be concerned about.

Now, luckily I own my apartment instead of renting it, so that simplifies things a lot. But I would honestly rather live in a damn cardboard box than put myself through the complete invasion of privacy that Score Assured provides.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I don't want to start some huge side discussion about the EU referendum here, but I'll just mention that the UK's own data protection legislation already covers subject access requests and rights to correct data that is wrong. There is no particular reason to expect that to change whatever the referendum result later this month turns out to be. Even if we vote to leave, it will surely be a few years before things get separated out and any major changes to the legal system get made, as the government will be busy for quite a while just trying to disentangle UK law from dependencies on EU sources and to maintain the existing provisions in the UK. Hopefully this particular business will have failed long before that becomes relevant.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

"The landlord protection act of 2017" or some shit

I'm more worried about "The employer protection act of 2017" or however they're going to replace European employee rights legislation. I quite like having more than 10 days holiday a year.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

I quite like having more than 10 days holiday a year.

Who doesn't like having a free lunch? The problem is that other people pay for your holidays through higher costs, unemployment, and transfer of business to other countries.

Re:Not normal

[Martin S.]

The original UK Data Protection Act pre-dates the EU Data Protection Directive by over a decade.

The UK pushed this standardisation through the EU.

Re:Not normal

[gsslay]

And the irony of that is they only did it because Thatcher was worried that if they didn't, the Germans would.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

Except Britain suffers none of those things because it's the world's 5th largest economy, and the fastest growing developed economy in the world over the last two years.

Countries in Europe such as Norway have even higher average levels of leave than us, and produce even more per-person than we do.

The idea that reasonable levels of annual leave somehow cause harm to an economy is demonstrably false.

Re:Not normal

[thegarbz]

So how long a company will stay afloat whose business it is to get people to violate contracts?

People are idiots in the grand scheme of things. Many are desperate in the grand scheme of things. Contracts? Frankly I'm surprised you could quote that. I certainly couldn't and I've been using Facebook since its inception.

Re:Not normal

[ooloorie]

The definition of "normal" is not for this company, or my landlord, to decide.

It is, however, for your landlord to decide whether he rents to you. It is their property and their choice whether to rent it and to who.

I think Tenant Assured might find that European law has quite a different view on that.

Different from who? Laws are not that different across OECD countries. So drop the Eurocentric attitude. And if you actually thought about it, you might find that a lot of these laws that appear at first glance to "help" people have unintended consequences: housing shortages, bad landlord/tenant relationships, discrimination, etc. People the usually try to fix the unintended negative consequences with even more laws and regulations.

Note that I'm not defending what the landlord is doing; I think using Tenant Assured is stupid and indicative of a bad landlord. But you aren't going to turn a bad landlord into a good one with legislation. Your best bet as a potential renter is to walk away from a landlord who uses Tenant Assured. You should thank your lucky stars that they made it so easy to spot them before you spent much time and effort moving in there.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK is almost 15% of the US economy, which is quite impressive for having 20% of the US's population.
Better growth? The US has been averaging 0.8% monthly growth during 2016. The UK? Averaging 0.4%, or half of the US. Norway? 0.1%, including negative months.

The US has higher worker productivity rates, and more hours worked per year. How you can possibly conclude that working fewer hours at lower productivity will somehow produce more of something eludes more. Your "demonstration" is false, and easily disproven by either a quick glance at actual data, or simple logic.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

Yes, that's absolutely true if you cherry pick one single month of data.

For the last full year of data, for Norway we have GDP per person of $68k US, and $55k US for the US. That's substantially higher economic output per person than the US, despite working far fewer hours. The trend has been true for many years now however.

Since we finally jumped out of the financial crisis and started to grow again, the UK achieved 3.2% growth followed by 2.7%, vs. the US' 2.2% followed by 3.1%.

Furthermore, the UK and Norway have achieved these figures without having to rely on spending money they don't have - the UK's debt to GDP is 5% lower than the UK's, Norway's debt to GDP is 162% lower than the US' (because it runs a surplus).

Statistics doesn't work by picking a figure that suits your argument, it works by looking at overall trends, so sorry that you suck at statistics, but you sucking at statistics and getting things wrong doesn't make you right.

Again, there is absolutely zero evidence that longer working hours result in higher productivity. Giving people decent amounts of leave can clearly do just as well for a nation as working them stupid. Hmm, working them stupid, that would explain a lot.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that other people pay for your holidays

That's not "the" problem. That's "your" problem. It's a problem you and I'm sure many smart people care about. He obviously cares about other problems though.

You might think your problems are more important than his. You might even have all the logical rational reasons in the world on why that is. But... none of that matters. The developed world works on democratic principles. Everybody, even the nutjobs and retards are entitled to what problems they care about, and have as much right as you to petition government to focus on them.

This, btw, is why libertarianism always fail under a democracy. You don't win many elections following libertarian principles. You can't promise free shit. You can't pretend to like or care about other people's interests just get their votes. Can't con people to vote against their own interests, etc.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

Yes, that's absolutely true if you cherry pick one single month of data.

I call your attention to a previous remark you made two posts up:

Except Britain suffers none of those things because it's the world's 5th largest economy, and the fastest growing developed economy in the world over the last two years.

Cherry picking two years of data isn't any better.

Again, there is absolutely zero evidence that longer working hours result in higher productivity. Giving people decent amounts of leave can clearly do just as well for a nation as working them stupid. Hmm, working them stupid, that would explain a lot.

Aside from the fact that the US is more productive per capita than the UK is.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

So you don't view high costs, unemployment, and export of valuable industry to other countries as problems? Consequences happen whether you choose to acknowledge them or not.

This, btw, is why libertarianism always fail under a democracy. You don't win many elections following libertarian principles. You can't promise free shit. You can't pretend to like or care about other people's interests just get their votes. Can't con people to vote against their own interests, etc.

You wouldn't be talking about it, if that were true. Libertarianism is fundamentally a reactionary ideology. Without abuses of power and such to rail against, it would be invisible.

Re:Not normal

[david_thornley]

You're talking about people in general, not the individual person who gets pissed at the situation and takes action. It would take only one person to get the court system involved.

Re:Not normal

[silentcoder]

>How you can possibly conclude that working fewer hours at lower productivity will somehow produce more of something eludes more

Easy. People who are well-rested produce more while working than people who are not. Actually guaranteeing a reasonable annual leave is thus good for the economy, it also stimulates other parts of the economy - tourism industries for example benefit from people having time to use them. Not to mention that, of course, the economy is hardly the most important thing about a society - giving people holidays benefits other aspects of society significantly as well. It's one reason why actual typical quality of life is significantly higher in both Norway and the UK than in the US. Quality of life is far more important than the economy - indeed the only reason to have an economy at all is for the potential benefits to quality of life so anytime the economy starts reducing people's quality of life you are ipso facto engaging in bad policy.

Re:Not normal

[silentcoder]

> Libertarianism is fundamentally a reactionary ideology

This is very true, but not in the way you think. You see "reactionary ideology" is a term of art. It means: "monarchist".

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

"Cherry picking two years of data isn't any better."

You pick date that best eliminates any confounding factors, factoring in data that is confounded by things like the EU referendum in the UK, or the recession which effected different countries in distinctly different ways tells us nothing about the impact of increased holidays.

"Aside from the fact that the US is more productive per capita than the UK is."

Right, but not Norway, I wasn't using the UK as a an example of productivity per-capita, we know the UK has a productivity problem unrelated to amount of leave because we're also less productive that European countries like Germany that have way more leave and work way less hours than us too. Again, you're mixing and matching stats to try and falsely make a point.

The point remains that there are plenty of examples of countries who have higher productivity and more leave and lower working hours than countries who have less leave and longer working hours proving the point that there is absolutely no demonstrable link between the two.

I guess you just have sour grapes that you're stuck in an environment where you get worked senseless and have no free time to yourself and rather than fight that to get better conditions that would have absolutely no negative cost for you or your country you insecurely try and justify it as somehow in your benefit when it's very obviously not. It seems clear you wont accept the reality and change your opinion though, so all I can really say is good luck throwing away hours of your life for a company that doesn't care about you for no practical benefit if you really think that's somehow a good thing.

Re:Not normal

[thegarbz]

It would take only one person to get the court system involved.

And just what would happen in the courts? Who would get sued?

The company involved which has zero relationship with the contract in question?
The company which has it's users voluntarily breaching the contract?
Or the users which would effectively do nothing more than self incriminate? The "but they told me to do it" defence hasn't worked well in the past.

In a general legal sense I agree with you, but we're talking about terms of service contracts here which are a legal grey mess full of things that may or may not be enforceable between parties who may or may not be part of the contract. And after all that massive expense of bringing on such a court case, what is to be gained by actually winning? A pat on the back? Smugness? For this to happen you'll need someone who's rich or bankrolled to be seriously enough affected by the result to care, and none of it would happen in this scenario.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

You pick date that best eliminates any confounding factors, factoring in data that is confounded by things like the EU referendum in the UK, or the recession which effected different countries in distinctly different ways tells us nothing about the impact of increased holidays.

Your two year sample doesn't do that.

Right, but not Norway, I wasn't using the UK as a an example of productivity per-capita, we know the UK has a productivity problem unrelated to amount of leave because we're also less productive that European countries like Germany that have way more leave and work way less hours than us too. Again, you're mixing and matching stats to try and falsely make a point.

Norway has unusually high productivity because of the size of its oil and hydroelectric generation per capita. It's a different sort of cherry picking you do here. Sure, if the entire world could be massive oil producers with huge hydro reserves exporting to some immense buyer, then we could all enjoy the level of productivity of Norway.

The point remains that there are plenty of examples of countries who have higher productivity and more leave and lower working hours than countries who have less leave and longer working hours proving the point that there is absolutely no demonstrable link between the two.

Then by all means show this. One country with an unusual level of natural resources doesn't qualify as "plenty of examples" though.

I guess you just have sour grapes that you're stuck in an environment where you get worked senseless and have no free time to yourself and rather than fight that to get better conditions that would have absolutely no negative cost for you or your country you insecurely try and justify it as somehow in your benefit when it's very obviously not. It seems clear you wont accept the reality and change your opinion though, so all I can really say is good luck throwing away hours of your life for a company that doesn't care about you for no practical benefit if you really think that's somehow a good thing.

No, what annoys me are the Pollyannas who just assert stuff without considering even in the slightest the drawbacks of their schemes. If all you consider are the benefits, then anything looks wonderful.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

You see "reactionary ideology" is a term of art. It means: "monarchist".

Strangely enough, no, it doesn't despite the obvious regal bearing of the term. It just means a belief system which is mostly in reaction to some stimulus, here, overbearing governments which are trending towards police states.

Re:Not normal

[silentcoder]

The term was coined during the French revolution specifically as a name for people who opposed the revolution and wanted to reinstate the monarchy. There is a contemporary movement known as the neo-reactionaries who outspokenly want to dismantle all democracies and instate monarchisms instead. Guess what it is a part of ? If you hadn't guessed the American libertarian movement you would be wrong. A growing number of libertarians are concluding that their bizarre ideas about politics can never be achieved in a democracy and thus wanting a monarchy out of some strange believe that this would make people more free. But I suppose if you define freedom the way libertarians do (the right for some people to turn themselves into aristocrats and excercise all the abuses associated with that state) then it's a perfectly logical next step. The current CEO of paypal is a notable member of the movement.

So no, the phrase in common English would mean what you think it means - but in political philosophy it refers to a very specific movement reacting to a very specific thing. The people whose reaction to democracy was wanting monarchy back. Like I said - term of art.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

Well, you do have a good point. We'll just tighten that language up. I think "reactive ideology" means what I intended.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's saying it's a free lunch??

5 weeks vacation is default in Sweden and it's not the government that pays but the company... See it as part of the salary.. Also having good breaks actually increases productivity..

Read this article and you may learn something...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/the-case-for-vacation-why-science-says-breaks-are-good-for-productivity/260747/

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

Who's saying it's a free lunch??

I am.

5 weeks vacation is default in Sweden and it's not the government that pays but the company... See it as part of the salary.. Also having good breaks actually increases productivity..

Except when it doesn't. The approach is fundamentally broken. I want five or more weeks of vacation, so I use my government to force my employer to give it to me. If I really were that valuable in the first place, then why didn't my employer offer that in the first place.

Read this article and you may learn something...

Or listen to that five year old explain why they deserve that candy. You might learn something about human rationalization.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

"Your two year sample doesn't do that."

Well obviously you know nothing about geopolitcs and the global economic situation if you believe that because you're simply wrong.

"Norway has unusually high productivity because of the size of its oil and hydroelectric generation per capita. It's a different sort of cherry picking you do here. Sure, if the entire world could be massive oil producers with huge hydro reserves exporting to some immense buyer, then we could all enjoy the level of productivity of Norway."

Except the US has those resources, but fails to do the same, highlighting the fact that productivity from working hours and holiday days is irrelevant compared to things like poor resource management. Which, you know, was my point, so thanks for finally agreeing.

"Then by all means show this. One country with an unusual level of natural resources doesn't qualify as "plenty of examples" though."

Yet, I also pointed out that the UK has some of the highest working hours and lowest holidays in Europe and is still less productive than those countries with shorter working hours and more holidays like Germany and France. I guess you ignored that example though because you've moved into the usual "Fuck, looks like I am wrong, but there's no way I'll admit it on the internet because I'm way too insecure for that" territory.

"No, what annoys me are the Pollyannas who just assert stuff without considering even in the slightest the drawbacks of their schemes. If all you consider are the benefits, then anything looks wonderful."

But you've not explained what the drawbacks are exactly, they're certainly not the things you state because there is no evidence at all that greater working hours and less holidays actually lead to more productivity. There have been a number of studies showing the opposite however (feel free to Google them, I can't be arsed). If you want something interactive though then see here, you can add the US to the chart. You might not want to though, because it'll be embarasing for your argument.

https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/g...

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

Ok, let's recap. You still haven't figured out that you're cherry picking data. You still insist that just because every country doesn't have the exact same productivity per worker per hour, then the number of hours worked doesn't matter. Let's see if we can fix stupid.

First, let's note that Norway has more oil and hydroelectric resources per capita than the US does around 10-15% of GDP is directly in exports of these two alone. Further, these industries have rather high productivity per worker. I believe those two sectors by themselves explain Norway's GDP advantage over the rest of the EU.

Yet, I also pointed out that the UK has some of the highest working hours and lowest holidays in Europe and is still less productive than those countries with shorter working hours and more holidays like Germany and France. I guess you ignored that example though because you've moved into the usual "Fuck, looks like I am wrong, but there's no way I'll admit it on the internet because I'm way too insecure for that" territory.

Ok, let's actually look at these examples. I took GDP per capita (PPP and nominal) from here and here. Then I took average annual hours worked per worker here. I get that Norway is vastly more productive than the rest of the group by a lot.

In the PPP GDP version (where GDP is scaled for "purchasing power parity"), Norway generates $48 dollars of PPP scaled GDP per hour worked; Germany is second at $34; The US is third at $31; France is fourth at $28; and the UK last at $25. In the nominal GDP version, the UK and Norway improve significantly (PPP and nominal are identical for the US by definition of this metric) while France and Germany slide. The result is that Norway is even further ahead at $52 of GDP per hour, the US is second at $31, Germany is now third at $30, UK fourth at $26, and France is last at $26 (but half a dollar lower than the UK).

It shows just how much cherry picking you did by picking Norway. It also demonstrates that a key part of why France and Germany do well again the UK and the US is that things simply cost less there rather than some unusual productivity advantage.

And finally, it shows that the US, despite the heavy hours worked, generates a lot of economic activity per unit of work and when one ignores cost of living adjustments and the like, does better than every country you listed except for Norway and its plentiful, high productivity resources.

Now before we go off on another meaningless rant about how clueless I am, let us note that outside of Norway, the GDP per hours worked fall in a narrow range despite the large difference between Germany or France and the US. I see no evidence for the assertion that working less will result in a significant productivity boost, especially one significant enough to justify it. To the contrary, they all correlate well with more labor resulting in more economic activity.

Moving on, it's worth noting that labor is far from the only factor. For example, Greece works longer (at least in 2015) than anyone on this list (including the US) yet generates far less GDP per capita than anyone on this list. Greece ends up generating $13 of GDP, PPP-adjusted per hour worked and $9 of nominal GDP per hour worked. So there are other factors than merely the hours worked and these have huge consequences. But I figure the crowd which ignores the advantages of working more is far more likely than I to wander into those minefields.

Anyway, I see no reason to move from my original position. It's real nice for the people who are employed that a variety of countries force their employers to employ people less productively, but it strikes me as rather dumb to ignore the costs of it. It's not just that you get another month of vacation, but also that less stuff gets done.

Re:Not normal

[david_thornley]

The defendant would be the company requiring others to break terms of service in exchange for something. It's a messy case, but I wouldn't want to defend myself against such a suit. The damages could be significant, which means lawyers might take the cases on a contingency basis.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

That was a very roundabout and long winded way of accepting that I'm right you know?

You could've just admitted it outright rather than waste all your time getting confused about what things like PPP are you know right?

Putting the final paragraph in to accept that I'm right, but refuse to accept it simultaneously was just... odd. You have still provided absolutely no evidence that increased working hours creates increased productivity, and there is still a large body of evidence and research into that specific thing showing the opposite.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

That was a very roundabout and long winded way of accepting that I'm right you know?

You already know my answer to that.

My view is that the attitude which just decides that forcing another month of vacation on employers won't cause problems is the same sort of attitude which has resulted in vastly worse productivity per hour worked for Greece than for Germany. While Germany's ideas about the value of vacation may be based on fantasy, they do get a lot of other things right economically.

You have still provided absolutely no evidence that increased working hours creates increased productivity

It probably doesn't increase productivity per hour worked (there's a trade off between reduced efficiency of many jobs at long hours per week versus synergy with a more active economy). But it does increase total output up to some point (which is probably in excess of 60 hours for most non intellectual jobs).

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't view high costs, unemployment, and export of valuable industry to other countries as problems?

Doesn't matter what I think. My point is that in a democracy, people are free to choose what problems they care about or want government to act on. Your problems aren't "the" problems.

Consequences happen whether you choose to acknowledge them or not.

That's my line. People are free to choose what consequences they care about. You care about economic consequences. Good for you. Other people don't, and they can petition government to also not care and act accordingly. That's how democracy works: no one set of consequences is more important by fiat. The people decide what consequences will be acted upon.

You wouldn't be talking about it, if that were true.

That makes no sense. People have been talking about libertarianism for a long time, the same way they talk about Marxism or Fascism or Imperialism or Capitalism or any other -ism. Doesn't mean either of those ideologies are winning or losing. We're just talking. Talk is cheap.

Empirical results show that the government has been growing for a long time, despite us talking about libertarianism and shrinking it. The dominant parties are not libertarian, neither in name nor policy, despite cries that maybe people should consider a 3rd option.

Libertarianism is fundamentally a reactionary ideology.

Another reason why it fails in a democracy. You succeed in democracy by being active and taking the initiative. Being reactive means libertarianism is always playing catch up, reacting to the laws other people pass.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

"My view is that the attitude which just decides that forcing another month of vacation on employers won't cause problems is the same sort of attitude which has resulted in vastly worse productivity per hour worked for Greece than for Germany. While Germany's ideas about the value of vacation may be based on fantasy, they do get a lot of other things right economically."

I'm not sure you really have the slightest understanding what the problems were in Greece. Greece's GDP was effectively just completely and utterly faked, they were borrowing and buying things they couldn't afford, and inevitably when it no longer remained tenable to keep cooking the books it all came tumbling down in a shit storm. Trying to compare anything to a broken economy like that is entirely meaningless, as Greece is so full of confounding factors that you just can't take anything meaningful away from measuring it.

We already know that offering additional vacation wont result in reduced productivity, because once again, we have more than enough real actual examples, so you're flogging a dead horse here in trying to pretend otherwise.

"It probably doesn't increase productivity per hour worked (there's a trade off between reduced efficiency of many jobs at long hours per week versus synergy with a more active economy). But it does increase total output up to some point (which is probably in excess of 60 hours for most non intellectual jobs)."

And herein I suspect is the crux of the problem, you seem to think productivity is equal to output, it's not, productivity is a question of how much output you can get relative to the amount of effort put in. Productivity and output are two different things that are only partially related. Your view that more hours worked equates to increased output is based on the outdated and long discredited idea that humans remain consistently efficient regardless of how tired they are.

You're working from the rather old fashioned idea that humans will consistently keep producing output and that in itself is the only factor involved, such that even if you accept that that output declines as a person gets more tired, they're still producing output, and hence still more productive than someone who doesn't put in the extra hours. That's an incredibly naive and incorrect viewpoint, because in reality there are costs to that too in that people become less engaged from being tired (and hence work less hard overall), people become more ill, the slow down in effort doesn't produce enough economic output to make up for the expenditure on equipment and machinery running and maintenance costs, and higher staff turn over results in more time spent trying to hire people which is dead time.

That's where economic activity is lost as you make people work increased hours, and where it can be gained by reducing hours, and that is evidence in many studies.

Science in general is something we keep learning more about as we get better methods at bringing in more variables, and it is through that that we can find things like this out, this is no different in this respect. So your simplistic world view is simply outdated, we now know there is more too it than simple output that must be balanced against the simplistic mindset of people at work = most stuff gets done.

That is precisely why Germany is more efficient than Britain, because people in Britain have hire levels of sickness, higher levels of absence, lower levels of happiness and engagement, all of which can be reduced by working lower hours (this is something that has been shown within Britain itself in comparisons between companies that give more leave, hence eliminating the confounding factors of different nations economic statuses).

The discussion has moved on from your very Victorian understanding of productivity.

Re:Not normal

[khallow]

I'm not sure you really have the slightest understanding what the problems were in Greece. Greece's GDP was effectively just completely and utterly faked, they were borrowing and buying things they couldn't afford, and inevitably when it no longer remained tenable to keep cooking the books it all came tumbling down in a shit storm. Trying to compare anything to a broken economy like that is entirely meaningless, as Greece is so full of confounding factors that you just can't take anything meaningful away from measuring it.

Sounds to me like you need to be more unsure of a lot of things.

We already know that offering additional vacation wont result in reduced productivity, because once again, we have more than enough real actual examples, so you're flogging a dead horse here in trying to pretend otherwise.

It's worth noting as nominal GDP the US has higher productivity per hour than every example you gave but Norway. That plus the US's greater working hours led to a considerable GDP per capita advantage over everyone but Norway. So you can say "we know", but the US is demonstrating a considerable economic advantage due to its greater working hours per employee.

And herein I suspect is the crux of the problem, you seem to think productivity is equal to output, it's not, productivity is a question of how much output you can get relative to the amount of effort put in. Productivity and output are two different things that are only partially related. Your view that more hours worked equates to increased output is based on the outdated and long discredited idea that humans remain consistently efficient regardless of how tired they are.

Workers don't have to be "consistently efficient". They just need to be more productive than the cost of hiring more workers at fewer hours per worker. We need to keep in mind that there are significant fixed costs per worker. Further, for a lot of jobs productivity doesn't go down that fast for lots of hours worked.

Science in general is something we keep learning more about as we get better methods at bringing in more variables, and it is through that that we can find things like this out, this is no different in this respect. So your simplistic world view is simply outdated, we now know there is more too it than simple output that must be balanced against the simplistic mindset of people at work = most stuff gets done.

Yes, let's science up this discussion! At least with something relevant please.

Funny, how when you were providing examples, a few cherry picked examples were good enough, but now that I'm playing the same game, we need science because of all this complexity that you had ignored before.

That is precisely why Germany is more efficient than Britain, because people in Britain have hire levels of sickness, higher levels of absence, lower levels of happiness and engagement, all of which can be reduced by working lower hours (this is something that has been shown within Britain itself in comparisons between companies that give more leave, hence eliminating the confounding factors of different nations economic statuses).

So why is Germany less efficient than the US despite working so much fewer hours?

The discussion has moved on from your very Victorian understanding of productivity.

But not in directions that are rational.

Re:Not normal

[Xest]

"Sounds to me like you need to be more unsure of a lot of things."

What, so I can end up ignorant? No thanks, facts are facts, I'd rather stick to knowing them.

"It's worth noting as nominal GDP the US has higher productivity per hour than every example you gave but Norway. That plus the US's greater working hours led to a considerable GDP per capita advantage over everyone but Norway. So you can say "we know", but the US is demonstrating a considerable economic advantage due to its greater working hours per employee."

You are making the fundamental mistake that correlation equals causation, and you show a deep lack of knowledge about how confounding factors can distort things. As such, you're making claims that simply aren't true, and you're ignoring cases whereby it remains not true, Britain also works much longer hours than Germany but is less productive. The US is showing no greater productivity due to working hours, it's GDP per person is high for reasons such as having a mass of raw resources (it's the biggest oil producer in the world again which is why it's embarassing that Norway is more productive on GDP per person and far fewer hours) through to the fact that it's in massive debt and has hence frontloaded it's GDP using massive debt based investment - that has to be paid off at some point.

"Workers don't have to be "consistently efficient". They just need to be more productive than the cost of hiring more workers at fewer hours per worker. We need to keep in mind that there are significant fixed costs per worker. Further, for a lot of jobs productivity doesn't go down that fast for lots of hours worked."

No, they need to be producing more output than the cost of having them as an employee, and that's simply not the case.

"Yes, let's science up this discussion! At least with something relevant please."

Oh I see, you don't like science, because statistics is hard right? That would explain why you're incapable of understand this discussion.

"Funny, how when you were providing examples, a few cherry picked examples were good enough, but now that I'm playing the same game, we need science because of all this complexity that you had ignored before."

Again, you don't understand relevant sampling, cherry picking is where you take examples to make a point, sensible sampling is when you build a sensible sample where confounding factors are reduced or mitigated. This is why we use science, because it matters.

"So why is Germany less efficient than the US despite working so much fewer hours?"

In large part because it's still working to boost the East to modern economic standards post reunification. You've still not addressed why Britain is less efficient due to massive productivity with more hours worked if greater working hours increases productivity, and why companies inside Britain with less working hours consistently show better productivity than those with more. On life expectancy alone the US is losing the equivalent of 17 days a year of working days compared to a country like Germany, so giving even 10 days to people which would likely contribute to a noticable improvement in life expectancy would problem allow you to break even.

"But not in directions that are rational."

Yes, that's an understandable comment from someone who has a problem with science and can't accept that modern research has proved them wrong. Do you think the Earth is flat and 6,000 years old as well?

But it's clear you're not going to let this go, you're clearly anti-science, don't understand statistics, refuse to accept peer reviewed academic research, can't accept the evidence but you're determined to pretend that you're getting some benefit from throwing away days of your life away for nothing so yeah, I'll leave you to keep pretending whilst I enjoy having an actual life and not seeing any reduction in quality of life as a result - even with your higher headline GDP you end up blowing it on things like your military, your broken penal system, and the inefficiency of your healthcare system anyway, so it's not like you even get to spend what you've got anyway regardless of what productivity improvements you falsely think you have.

Re:Not normal

[Anonymous Coward]

Cherry picking two years of data isn't any better.

It's 24 times as good as your sample, fatty.

Probably Illegal

[Tx]

Wow. I'm not on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, but I do have a twitter account. Which I only use for following porn stars and for trolling. Guess I won't be renting via any agency that uses this service ;).

In all honesty, I highly doubt this will stand up. In connection with employers asking for social media passwords of employees;

A spokesman for the ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] said: "The UK Data Protection Act clearly says that organisations shouldn't hold excessive information about individuals, and it's questionable why they would need that information in the first place." [...] "In the UK, however, it would potentially put employers in breach of the Data Protection Act because it would constitute "excessive" information about an individual, the ICO indicated. "We would have very serious concerns if this practice was to become the norm in the UK," (article).

If that's true for employers, I'd say it's way more true for landlords and letting agencies, so I'd expect the ICO to have a few things to say on this. Seems like a probable violation of the Data Protection Act.

Re:Probably Illegal

[mrbester]

There's no "seems" about it. DPA applies to anybody with data about anybody else. Yes, this includes the authorities, but with exemptions because trrism etc.

Re:Probably Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it still be excessive data if all the company kept was a conclusion, based on data which is subsequently discarded? I believe this would be called meta data.

Re:Probably Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct, there is no "seems" about this. The DPA will apply and the ICO should be informed about it as it looks to me like a massive overstretch of what they are allowed to do.

It's noticeable that the ICO has started to grow a set of balls (though still very small) and growl quietly at companies (though not govts) about their misuse of data in the last year or so. I only wish they would really start taking companies on and fining these companies enough money to make them blink hard, say 10% of their GP turnover for instance. The problem is that the ICO remit is very tight (because the UK govt set up the ICO as a sop to the public) and isn't allowed to be proactive. They also ensure that the head of the ICO doesn't rock the boat too much. Phorm comes to mind as an example though I recall that this was more the Met Police. On a good note, Phorm went tits-up recently so that was good.

I wonder if there is any to poison the data?

Other EU countries are far more aggressive which is great. Wish we were.

 

Re:Probably Illegal

[TheRaven64]

I suspect that someone in government has seen the big the fines that the EU has collected for violations of the data protection directive and asked the ICO why they're not making the same kinds of contributions to the budget. Large as they are, the fines from the EU are still not enough to be more than the cost of doing business for some of these companies.

Re:Probably Illegal

[Xest]

Yes, simply put, what this organisation is claiming to do is illegal, however, judging by the amount of Lorem Ipsum on the site, the lack of any pricing et. al. I think it's highly likely that this whole thing is a scam, or just a snake oil peddler.

I work in the fraud/credit industry and can categorically state that you cannot simply just do what these people are claiming to do without undergoing serious compliance efforts. First and foremost is the fact that they're engaging in financial services by including credit risk worthiness, and this would require them to register with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, however there is no registration at the address on the website as a financial services company:

https://register.fca.org.uk/sh...

This is despite the fact that they MUST acquire permission to operate in this industry from the FCA and undergo necessary compliance checks, see here:

https://www.the-fca.org.uk/aut...

The relevant listing is "providing credit information services".

The company is however genuinely registered so isn't a complete hoax:

https://beta.companieshouse.go...

Beyond the financial aspect of professing to evaluate people's financial worthiness amongst other criteria the amount of detail they're collecting would appear to place them in clear breach of the data protection act in general also.

In recent years the reality is that there is actually a lot of oversight in the UK of companies providing financial services, in large part as a result of the excesses of the 00s and the mis-selling, the financial crisis et. al., the predatory payday loans companies that profited from people etc. For precisely this reason you cannot simply start a company and start bandying about financial data like credit risk as these guys profess to with absolutely no oversight.

Anyone in their right mind would steer clear of this company both as an investor, and as a customer. Again, if it is doing what it says it is doing, then it is operating outside the law.

Re:Probably Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here...

You appear to have read the summary, done some original thinking, provided useful information, written clearly and concisely, not invoked Goodwins Law, checked out the story as opposed to skim reading it and provided a summary. Wow!

Been nice knowing you...

Re:Probably Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodwin's law: as the length of a financial crisis approaches infinity, the probability of having your knighthood revoked approaches one.

Re:Probably Illegal

[Vrekais]

The Lorem Ipsum is very strange for anything that's meant to be up and running.

I'm not usually one for big business but Facebook's terms of service expressly forbid third party access or sharing as far as I know. I'm aware that terms of service are of flimsy legality sometimes (some where between verbal contract and the ridiculousness of EULAs) but using Facebook for this without going via them (which wouldn't be possible because they deal in bulk analysis not individuals) just won't happen. Well it shouldn't happen. I sincerely hope it won't, Facebook might actually do the right thing, maybe, am I being naive?

Re:Probably Illegal

[umghhh]

They could also simplify the whole process and just meta-randomly generate the data without all the fuss of parsing anything. Seems like win-win especially if one can get the subjects of this process to pay a fee influencing the randomness of the data processing.

Lorem Ipsum

[jobsagoodun]

Has this startup started up?? (or is it just crap at rendering itself in Chrome?) - to quote it's website: Clever Tenant Referencing "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum at consectetur sem, eget tempus lacus. Curabitur at cursus est. Suspendisse lectus lorem, porttitor sodales porttitor ac, dapibus eu lorem. Nullam in sodales dolor."

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[jobsagoodun]

& the video from their recruitment sister company could do with a bit of work... https://vimeo.com/163066774

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

"registerd[sic] address 66 Allport Road, Cannock, WS11 1DY."

Look like a total bunch of geniuses.

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[jobsagoodun]

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/...

Wonder if theres 2 guys in that garage!

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

"registerd[sic] address 66 Allport Road, Cannock, WS11 1DY."

Look like a total bunch of geniuses.

This Genius, maybe?

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they would like to be subscribed to a wide range of social magazines, perhaps for more discerning gentleman?

I did go through their website and tried to find their privacy policy which doesn't appear to exist.

I'll keep an eye on this and perhaps alert the ICO to their practices.

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

and
this one

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

and
this one

As far as I can tell, is this charming fellow here
(captcha: deplore...how apposite.)

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[Anonymous Coward]

"registerd[sic] address 66 Allport Road, Cannock, WS11 1DY."

Look like a total bunch of geniuses.

This Genius, maybe?

His linkedin BS

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[squiggleslash]

Thornhill eh? Maybe we can solve the problem by framing him, convincing the Russians that he's a CIA agent about to uncover whatever diabolical schemes they're engaged in...

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[caffiend2049]

Perhaps we are all hard at work for them right now - advising them of potential legal issues, tweaking their business model, and generally replacing paid pre-launch research?

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[myowntrueself]

"registerd[sic] address 66 Allport Road, Cannock, WS11 1DY."

Look like a total bunch of geniuses.

This Genius, maybe?

Maybe this genius:

https://www.facebook.com/steph...

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[stephanruby]

It sounds like a hoax, designed to maximize outrage.

This is not to say that there aren't companies intending to violate our privacy in that way, it is just that most companies wouldn't be so blatant and upfront about breaking the law.

Re:Lorem Ipsum

[toddestan]

Looks like the Lorem Ipsum is gone now (or it's crap rendering in Pale Moon), but I'd guess there's now less than 50 words on the entire website. Every link just keeps on going back to the same couple of useless landing pages.

To be fair, now there's nothing on their website that claims they do anything like the summary suggests, or that they actually do anything at all for that matter.

Just mention, Dental Work

[Anonymous Coward]

and that will have them running far, far away.

Re:Just mention, Dental Work

[DrVxD]

Is it safe?

Sure, no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a list of all my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles:

You're free to inspect them all and subject to the deepest scrutiny you can afford. I will be paying the rent by bank wire.

Re:Sure, no problem

[DarkLordBelial]

You may think that's clever - but I suspect landlords who use this system will simply refuse you if you don't have a social media profile.

Re:Sure, no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This only means they are the kind of landlords I don't want to have anything to do with, so win/win.

The Term "Toadying Swine" Seems Insufficient

[Karl Cocknozzle]

We might need to invent new insults for these bootlickers. And that's what they really are: Bootlickers. They're facilitating the worst sort of landlord and employer abuse to grub some money for themselves. "Swine" does not seem a strong enough word.

Re:The Term "Toadying Swine" Seems Insufficient

[silentcoder]

>Bootlickers
  Only if you have a very strong Canadian accent.

Re:The Term "Toadying Swine" Seems Insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

The software/technology industry really needs to grow some professional ethics and blacklist people who work for these surveillance-as-a-business-model companies. You want to pull a six-figure salary by writing code to datamine people's phone calls? Ok, but life will be more difficult when you can't go to conferences, open source projects refuse to communicate with you, etc.

It'll never happen, but a man can dream I guess.

What's next?

[Geeky]

To rent this flat you must own an Amazon Echo and grant us access to everything you've said to Alexa?

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need to remember that this is not a public service, but a private business. You don't need to buy from people you don't like. On the other hand, you do need to deal with a government (or public body) even if you don't like it.

Re:What's next?

[Salgak1]

The issue here, is one of Fair Housing Laws. Can't speak to .uk. but in the US:

The Federal Fair Housing Acts (42 U.S. Code 3601-3619) prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, familial status (having children), and physical or mental disability (including alcoholism and past drug addiction). In addition, many states and cities also prohibit discrimination based on marital status, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

A landlord may reject you for poor credit history, income that a reasonable businessperson would deem insufficient to pay the rent, negative references from a previous landlord or employer, a criminal conviction, or a prior eviction lawsuit (even one that you won). As long as they don’t discriminate, landlords can basically choose whomever they want. For example, a landlord can refuse to rent to smokers or disallow pets because smokers (and pet owners) as a group are not protected by antidiscrimination laws. If your landlord’s policy is no pets, no smoking, or some other legitimate lease or rental agreement term, you’re out of luck unless you can make some convincing arguments for your case.

Re:What's next?

[Salgak1]

Note, please, that Social Media are not among the allowable categories. . . at least in .us

Re:What's next?

[zabbey]

It's not among the unallowable categories, either.

Re:What's next?

[david_thornley]

Also in the US, if you deliberately get information on my status in any protected category, and deny me the apartment, you're laying yourself open to a lawsuit. It's far safer to make sure you don't get such information.

No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

If Millenials weren't so damn eager to tell the whole world and his dog about their tedious lives on social media in the first place this company couldn't exist. Reap what you sow kiddies.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Ironically, this whole disturbing business might fail before long precisely because younger generations are much more aware of the dangers of over-sharing. The Millenial generation probably is going to suffer for sharing too freely, but at least their kids seem to be learning from their mistakes, and it's going to be fewer of the Millenials and more of their kids who want to rent as time goes by.

Re: No, its because of social media it happens

[undefinedreference]

If you think that's bad, you should see cities in the US that are in demand. My city has been gaining 20-30% YoY for the last 5-6 years while incomes of locals have been declining. Most are being purchased by foreigners that leave them vacant in a metro with a dire lack of housing due to local geography.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[dbIII]

We are on social media here now!
The difference is we have worked out not to put our real names on the stuff we are telling the whole world and his dog. Also less ads, far less personal info and even beta looked less like someone had thrown a cake at the screen than BookFace and the rest.

Re: No, its because of social media it happens

[khallow]

What's the city? I've heard of this sort of thing in California, for example.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

Is a discussion board social media? I suppose it is in a way but there's no personal aspect to it so its not the same as facebook et al IMO.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the idiot posting on Slashdot without posting as AC through Tor.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

Right, because my slashdot login gives all my personal details away doesn't it.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[aaarrrgggh]

After being on the site and posting for a few years I don't doubt someone that actually cares could figure out my real name, or at least establish if aaarrrgggh was in fact a subject in question, so I do censor myself at times. Posting AC only makes it slightly more difficult.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[jareth-0205]

If Millenials weren't so damn eager to tell the whole world and his dog about their tedious lives on social media in the first place this company couldn't exist. Reap what you sow kiddies.

Wow... I mean, is it hard to be that smugly self-satisfied? Do you have to put actual effort into it? This is a serious problem, but yeah, totally use it as an opportunity to take an easy swipe at young people doing something you disapprove of.

Very few people forecast the rise of large data processing, and it's only very recently that this sort of bullshit has started happening. I get that you hate millenials, perhaps you should also consider how catastrophically they've been failed by previous generations, rising debt, lowering salary possibility, massively rising housing costs, as a generation they have been royally fucked over. The average starting salary for a graduate in the UK is the same as it was 15 years ago, 30% lower after inflation. And they now graduate with about £18k of debt to pay off. A bit of vain tweeting is hardly worth mentioning in that context.

You think that claiming you don't have (or even not having) a Facebook account will help you in this situation? No, they'll just see you as a risk and discount you.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[thegarbz]

Right, because my slashdot login gives all my personal details away doesn't it.

Implying that the reason Facebook gives details away is because there are millenials on it? I mean I know what you're trying to say, but it just doesn't make any sense.

If the entire world were using IRC or the entire world were using Slashdot you could bet your left testicle that someone would be trying to monetise the user list. This has nothing to do with social media or millenials, and everything to do with the marketing buzzwords like "big data". Let me guess you don't realise that VISA or Target are collecting huge troves of information on you everytime you shop either, and this is somehow the fault of a few social media companies?

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

Wtf are you talking about? Slashdot has my email address and the IP I log in from. Good luck trying to monetize that.

"Let me guess you don't realise that VISA or Target"

Sure, big companies you have almost no choice but to use (if you want to eat without hunting your own food) will do it. But even they don't have my picture or my interests (other than what they can glean from what I buy) , they don't know my friends or my family, they don't know what car I drive, they don't know where I work etc. There's a big difference between giving away the minimum amount of data when necessary and sharing your entire life on social media like naive millenials do.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Slashdot idiot blaming "the kids" for unethical and illegal corporate behavior. People should be able to share information about themselves without it being used to deny them basic human essentials.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

"take an easy swipe at young people doing something you disapprove of."

You're confusing disapproval with pointing out a fact. Personally I don't give a shit, if a kid wants to share their life with big brother thats their lookout. Just don't want to hear them whine like babies when the inevitable happens.

"Very few people forecast the rise of large data processing, "

Bullshit. Anyone with a working braincell could see where things were heading from at least the turn of the century before Facebook even existed when AlvaVista and Google kicked off. If people were too blind or naive to see it , well thats just tough isn't it.

"I get that you hate millenials, perhaps you should also consider how catastrophically they've been failed by previous generations, rising debt, lowering salary possibility, massively rising housing costs, as a generation they have been royally fucked over."

Oh spare me. It took me 10 years to save up for my first mortgage deposit for a miserable 1 bed flat after uni. You kids spend your life whining about how tough you have it.

" The average starting salary for a graduate in the UK is the same as it was 15 years ago"

Bullshit. It was £20,300 in 2000 compared to £29K in 2014. Google it. Want to know what my starting salary was in the 90s? 8K , yes EIGHT thousand a year for a graduate position. So take your 29K and STFU.

"No, they'll just see you as a risk and discount you."

I won't be applying to rent anywhere anymore so I couldn't care less. Its the generation that gave life to social media that needs to worry. Oh, that'll be you.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[jareth-0205]

Link for my earlier number: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/educ...
That is based on a gov.uk report. I will admit that I remembered the period wrong - should have been 7 years. Point remains the same though.

I won't be applying to rent anywhere anymore so I couldn't care less.

Well exactly. That's very much my point - you don't care. Doesn't affect you, so fuck anyone else.
And for information, I'm a bit older than millenial and have managed to get property and consider myself doing fine. Weirdly though, I can though still care about problems that aren't just about me.

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Hognoxious]

It was ã20,300

Is that Australian pounds? You're old!

Re:No, its because of social media it happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile it's the Boomers who push for this stuff, perfectly willing to give up their privacy for some supposed security by keeping out those undesirables. And hey, if you've got nothing to hide then what are you worried about...?

Whatabout Landlords

[polyp2000]

Glad I no-longer rent. But my experience with bad landlords left me wondering why there isnt something like this but in favour of tennants who wish to check if their prospective landlord isnt an arse.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[cryptolemur]

Because a service like that would be sued out of existence or forbidden in the next "free" trade "agreement", since it might hinder profits of somebody.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[ooloorie]

You can find many property management companies and related businesses on Yelp and other reviews. They are usually also covered in news sources, you can find out past and current lawsuits against them, and get information about their financials. So, you actually have a lot of sources of information.

Furthermore, the reason landlords have become very cautious is because (1) they are letting you use something valuable and you can do a lot of damage to it, and (2) laws in many places make it difficult to evict renters even when they misbehave.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find plenty of landlord review sites with a quick google search. Even though you're no longer in the market, try it some time.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

>You can find many property management companies and related businesses on Yelp and other reviews. They are usually also covered in news sources, you can find out past and current lawsuits against them, and get information about their financials. So, you actually have a lot of sources of information.

False. Most terrible landlords change their brand name every 6 months. I lived in an apartment managed by a worthless landlord. The signage was 6 layers thick when I moved in and 12 layers thick then I moved out 3 years later. The mother-in-laws apartment is the same.

>Furthermore, the reason landlords have become very cautious is because (1) they are letting you use something valuable and you can do a lot of damage to it, and (2) laws in many places make it difficult to evict renters even when they misbehave.

The reason renters have become very cautious is because (1) Landlords don't give a shit about the living conditions on offer (broken water, broken heating, animal and insect infestations, insecure buildings, illegal wiring, asbestos, etc) and (2) Even though landlords typically charge 50% of the typical tenant's net income, they still gouge for brand new things that aren't listed in the contract and were assumed to be free by all tenants after moving in (Air conditioning surcharge, extra costs for parking, etc).

From my experience, landlords to more damage to their own stuff than tenants. I've seen tenants complain about leaks for decades whose floor has rotted through to another level. But the landlord didn't care until the tenant threatened to bring inspectors in before the landlord put the place up for sale. Some ugly paint on the walls or ripped up carpet is nothing compared to a complete gut.

Why don't the tenants protect themselves? Because it's not free to go to court, and they're living on nothing already. Also landlords rarely lose because they can afford an expensive lawyer, while you are, out of poverty, forced to represent yourself.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

"(1) they are letting [the tenant] use something valuable and you can do a lot of damage to it"
  - umm yes .... but they are charging [the tenant] an absolute fortune to do this ... and that is what deposits are for
  - and if you don't like the risk of doing that business ... ummm ... don't ... go and do something else.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're not "letting you", you're paying rent for the privilege. The rent is at a profit, which covers the risk and then some. Landlords aren't doing you a favour. It's a business. The problem is many of the new breed of amateur one-house landlords don't understand this. They just see you as a way to pay their mortgage.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

This has me wondering... Since this organization has less clout than the credit reporting agencies, can we actually sue them for libel if any of their report is untrue? I'd love it if we could sue credit reporters for libel.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience as a landlord, tenants break a lot of shit they don't want to pay for. I'm easy on it because for me it's just an extra income and the rental income is enough to do maintenance. However when I can understand landlords being assholes to people who are assholes themselves. Imagine renting out a room in your house and the occupant never cleaning it, allowing garbage to collect etc, and the law being on their side. Try imagining wearing the other shoes sometime.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Solandri]

Gonna reply to the anon responses here instead of one at a time.

False. Most terrible landlords change their brand name every 6 months.

Then don't rent from a landlord whose management company is 6 months old. A good landlord will usually be using a management company that's been around for decades, and has a long track history. A good landlord will be successful enough that he has multiple properties, and finds it easier to hire a management company to handle the day-to-day operations. If the landlord is running it all himself, he's more likely to own just the one property, which increases the risk to the tenant of getting a looney.

The reason renters have become very cautious is because (1) Landlords don't give a shit about the living conditions on offer (broken water, broken heating, animal and insect infestations, insecure buildings, illegal wiring, asbestos, etc)

Your and OP's statements are not contradictory. Both landlords and tenants need to be cautious about whom they get into a contract with. Ideally, the realtors who show the properties would do the legwork of background checks on both the landlord and the prospective tenant, since they're the ones in the best position to build up a database of landlord and tenant turnover history. But since that industry is a sham monopoly (uniform pricing) which charges a huge amount disproportionate to services provided, it's fallen upon the landlords and tenants to gather that information themselves.

OP is spot-on that landlords need to do background checks (not as extensive as in TFA, but some background checking) because laws have made it extremely difficult to get rid of a problem tenant. A contractor friend of mine would (in addition to his regular contracting work) buy a second home, fix it up, rent it out while he placed it on the market and waited for it to sell, then do it again. The third or fourth time he did this, he decided to skip the background check (his wife and kids pleaded with him to pay the $500, but he decided it was a waste of money). The tenant he ended up getting was a professional squatter. As soon as he'd been living there long enough to qualify under the state's definition of residence, he immediately stopped paying rent, and used every trick in the book (filing court papers on the last date, filing for every extension possible) to drag out the eviction process as long as possible. After more than a year with no rental income, my friend's savings had been drained, the bank foreclosed on both the rental house and his personal home, and his credit was ruined. (He'd bought a bigger personal home than he could afford with just his contracting work, since fixing up houses and selling them provided such a good profit. But with his money and credit tied up in the house occupied by the squatter, he couldn't buy another house to fix up.) He now lives in a rental apartment, and he's still working as a contractor even though he's getting close to 70 because he needs that income.

and (2) Even though landlords typically charge 50% of the typical tenant's net income, they still gouge for brand new things that aren't listed in the contract and were assumed to be free by all tenants after moving in (Air conditioning surcharge, extra costs for parking, etc).

1) For your own financial well-being, you should never pay more than 33% of your gross income as rent (or mortgage + taxes + insurance). If the only housing you can find exceeds 33%, then you are either looking in too expensive a neighborhood, or you need to be more aggressive in demanding higher pay before accepting a job. (For the income levels you're talking about, this is probably in the neighborhood of 40% of net income.)

2) Rents are determined by the market. If the rent is excessive, that means the demand for housing in the area is much greater than the supply, and it becomes "worth it" for developers to build more

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[ooloorie]

"(1) they are letting [the tenant] use something valuable and you can do a lot of damage to it" - umm yes .... but they are charging [the tenant] an absolute fortune to do this ... and that is what deposits are for

A deposit doesn't even begin to cover the potential damage a renter can cause.

- and if you don't like the risk of doing that business ... ummm ... don't ... go and do something else.

That is exactly what landlords have been doing. It's why there is a housing shorting, why rentals are being converted, and why more and more of the remaining landlords are assholes with an army of lawyers. It's also why good landlords and tenants meet by word of mouth and personal acquaintances.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is many of the new breed of amateur one-house landlords don't understand this. They just see you as a way to pay their mortgage.

So you are saying that the only people you want to rent from is large, commercial property management companies? Who is keeping you?

The rent is at a profit, which covers the risk and then some.

Well, for many small landlords, it doesn't cover the risk, in particular given the various legal restrictions on landlords. Hence you get condo conversions and housing shortages.

No, they're not "letting you", you're paying rent for the privilege.

As anybody even halfway familiar with the English language should understand, I was referring to the fact that they have a choice whether to rent to you, to someone else, sell, or just keep the property empty.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Its pretty easy to find when a company was incorporated in most countries, and a quick search through a records office can tell if they've owned a property for quite a while or if they've been swapping names every few years. Things are far from cut and dry, sure there are landlords who treat their tenants like trash. But there are as many (if not more) tenants who treat their landlords property like trash.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

In the other hand I came across some rented accommodation in London, that I still cannot understand hard as I try how to rent such a rotten crap could be allowed
and I mean seriously bad places
Also I came across landlord performing reality defeating antics (and mostly getting away with it even if it means that they have to appear in court every now and them)
Coming from another "European" country, I found the British rented market pretty shocking, this days I know much better, but arriving here as a fresh fish...holy sheet

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is with this country, Property owners want every right to look at you're dirty laundry, but when you air their dirty laundry they sue you for defamation. Something needs to be done to protect online reviews, and make sure that people who have a negative review can safely air it, and those who game the system are punished for it.

Re:Whatabout Landlords

[Anonymous Coward]

If the tenant did damage to the property on purpose would that not be classified as destruction of property and be a criminal case? There must be insurance that covers that... Ie same thing as any random person takes a sledge-hammer and goes nuts on the outside of the building..

Also if renting out to a business should contain clauses like "not allowed on the property in case of bancrupcy or outstanding rent.". With this it would be criminal tresspass if the person enters the property without explicit permission of the landlord.

Legislation time

[Oxygen99]

I wonder if it's time to look at legislation to prevent discrimination by social media. Housing is too important to be allocated on whether you were a dick on Twatterbook a decade ago. It's not even like you can withdraw.

"No social media presence? Well, I'm sorry sir, but we just don't know who you are..."

Re:Legislation time

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a law that punishes such behavior - be it in the form of creating, running or using such a service - with complete forfeiture of all assets for being an asshole.

captcha: violator

Re:Legislation time

[ooloorie]

If your knee-jerk reaction is "legislation time" every time a company misbehaves, then "housing allocation" is pretty much what you end up with: a small number of politically connected, powerful megabusinesses running everything--if you're lucky--or state-owned housing otherwise.

Housing otherwise is still supposed to be a free market; that is, buyers and renters voluntarily agree with sellers and owners to engage in transactions. When the seller/owner is a jerk, your best choice is to walk away, not to call for legislation.

Speaking as a British landlord.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that. My tenants lives are their own business.

I've basically assumed Facebook wad public.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who though facebook was private? They make their money on the arbitrage between your illusion of privacy and your actual privacy.

Got to show the report

[Alain Williams]

All that the (prospective) tenant needs to do is to submit a Subject access request (possibly paying £10) and they have to give all of the information within 40 days. Certainly for people in England (and it is a British company), I don't know what happens if someone from the USA would try it.

Trouble is that many people will just hand over their passwords and forget about it.

Re:Got to show the report

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be an advantage?

Say they put something stupid up.. "Oh, that wasn't me, my stupid landlord put that on there"

What if they don't have facebook?

[toonces33]

I don't. Nor do I have most of the others.

Re:What if they don't have facebook?

[Gilgaron]

I suppose this is an opportunity for another startup to provide 'clean' social media profiles for a fee. You give them some pictures or yourself and your pets, they fill in some fake vacation photos and some astroturf friends/followers. I'd be surprised if teens these days didn't run parallel accounts: one their parents know about, one they don't.

Re:What if they don't have facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one, haven't used it since 2013, just 1 friend and zero content.

Simple answer

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sorry, I do not have a social networking account." Now, prove otherwise.

The fact that this is even remotely legal is problematic at best. It should be immediately challenged and put down.

I admit, I do have a facebook account but only so family members can message me through it. I have made exactly one post as a status update which reads, "Please do not put things on my 'wall'. If you do, it, and you, will be removed. Thank you for your cooperation. If you need to contact me, message me or if you have my phone number call or text me."

Headline or puzzle?

[Troyusrex]

I don't have any commentary on the subject matter, but I can say it took me a full minute to parse this awful headline. First off, I've never heard, nor can I easily find, reference to "strip mine" with regard to data. After that it isn't clear which nouns and adjectives go together. For instance, I was surprised to hear that there is specialized "Social Media For Landlords" until after a few seconds I realised that wasn't what they were getting at. I tend to give a lot of leeway to typos and grammar mistakes as they are easy to make, hard to catch, and usually have so little negative impact. But in this case the headline was put together in such a way as to make it extremely difficult to parse. "British Startup Strip Mines Renters' Private Social Media For Landlords "

Re:Headline or puzzle?

[cdrudge]

I've never heard, nor can I easily find, reference to "strip mine" with regard to data.

Washington Post had a better title of "Creepy startup will help landlords, employers and online dates strip-mine intimate data from your Facebook page", but also used strip mine data.

Strip mining is a very intrusive process that removes the easily visible stuff right at the surface and digs deep to get to the valuable material underneath after sorting through it, and ultimately leaves a giant ugly hole. Seems like that fits this company's description as it pertains to data very well.

Re:Headline or puzzle?

[Rick Zeman]

Given those number of characters (the Slashdot limit) how would you have written it?

Re:Headline or puzzle?

[bingoUV]

People are stupid.

Isn't the solution obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tell them you don't have any social media accounts. Done. If everyone does this, that just renders them powerless.

Re:Isn't the solution obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tell them you don't have any social media accounts. Done. If everyone does this, that just renders them powerless.

No, it'll render people homeless.

As a landlord, if the government prevents me from protecting my apartment building by screening potential tenants as I see fit, I'll raze the the place to the ground and put up a payroll check cash advance service storefront charging the typical usury interest rates.

Problem solved for me.

You and the former tenants can go sleep behind a dumpster somewhere, I don't give a damn. *I* already have a place to live which I own in full and owe nothing on.

Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[Qbertino]

... Maybe? Perhaps?

Honestly, I don't get it.

I once had a landlord who specifically required a key to have access to the appartment in case I left a candle burning or something. Apparently he'd had some experience along those lines in the past that had resulted in a fire. if, so, btw., that would've been entirely the fault of the tenant and the tenants liability to pay damages and whatnot.

I stroke out those lines in the contract. He said no way would he sign it that way. I respectfully declined and he had to find himself another tenant.
I'm pretty sure that part of the contract would've been invalid here in Germany but I just didn't want the hassle. If a guy is so pesky about is 1 room apartment, god knows what trouble he would cause in the long run.

Bottom line: Don't put up with shitty/ilegal contracts. It's that simple.

Re:Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[dbIII]

In some places that is normal but it's also normal that if they use that key without cause they know they are in deep legal shit.

Re:Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[cdrudge]

Every apartment I lived in during my younger years the landlord retained a key to the property. They were all apartment communities in the United States. Lease language as well as case law is pretty well establish that the tenant has a right to privacy, but the landlord also has a right to access the property for emergencies, maintenance, or to show the property to potential tenants or purchasers. 24 hour advance notice may be required by local law for the latter 2, but not for the first.

Re:Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[SecurityGuy]

Bottom line: Don't put up with shitty/ilegal contracts. It's that simple.

Sure, this, when it's only a small percentage of companies that do things like this. Stuff like this is concerning because if it becomes widespread, "don't put up with shitty/illegal contracts" becomes "don't rent anywhere". I put mandatory arbitration agreements in this category. If you don't want to accept a mandatory arbitration agreement, that's synonymous with not having a credit card, for example.

Re:Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. You should never consent to something you are uncomfortable with.

I'm sure he found another tenants. Bottom line: Don't put up with shitty/other peoples kids. That's their parents job.

Re:Errrm, ... don't rent from these landlords? ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't put up with shitty/ilegal contracts. It's that simple.

that only works if you're economically strong enough to have choices, lots of people aren't

be thankful

[ooloorie]

As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report, unlike with credit reports. Landlords first, employers next...and then?

If the landlord thinks this is a good idea, be thankful. Why? Because you don't want to rent from such a jerk.

Renter/Landlord Containment Policy

[TheRealHocusLocus]

This Gangster UK Tech Startup made possible solely by Internet law enforcement weapons for Cloud Control, leveraging thermostatic social media 'social climate controls' to make Landlord Brainwash Radio. All people have slippery spongy social media brain, this is a REAL MOIST PINK BRAIN attached to Credit Score to indicate slovenly wall-punching muddy footprint poodle pooping Tenant measure that Computer God Landlords can use to Score them --- from the length of a single blade of lawn-grass!

Cloud Analytics and algorithmic intellectual property housed in a Frankenstein Cabinet in the Cloud, a neural net made with chicken-wire and carpet tacks, will feed on the voluntary output of yourself and persons whose names are similar to yours, solving your life like a crossword or Soduku puzzle and writing the results into your REAL BRAIN as you lay in their Operating Cabinet. You ARE a cog in their machine as surely as the fetus surfing the web from a Brave New World Jar on a conveyor belt.

Contemplate this future as you lay in your briny pool of social media. And you thought banks were bad.

This Gangster Computer God *IS* as *WAS* foretold by Francis E. Dec, but we did not listen.

"Gangster Computer God Worldwide Secret Containment Policy made possible solely by Worldwide Computer God Frankenstein Controls. Especially lifelong constant-threshold Brainwash Radio. Quiet and motionless, I can slightly hear it. Repeatedly this has saved my life on the streets. Especially lifelong, constant-threshold Brainwash Radio. Four billion worldwide population - all living - have a Computer God Containment Policy Brain Bank Brain, a real brain, in the Brain Bank Cities on the far side of the moon we never see. Primarily based on your lifelong Frankenstein Radio Controls, especially your Eyesight TV sight-and-sound recorded by your brain, your moon-brain of the Computer God activates your Frankenstein threshold Brain-wash Radio - lifelong inculcating conformist propaganda. Even frightening you and mixing you up and the usual "Don't worry about it" for your setbacks, mistakes - even when you receive deadly injuries! THIS is the Worldwide Computer God Secret Containment Policy!

" Worldwide as a Frankenstein slave, usually at night, you go to the nearby hospital or camouflaged miniature-hospital van trucks. You strip naked, lay on the operating table, which slides into the sealed Computer God Robot Operating Cabinet. Intravenous tubes are connected. The slimy, vicious Jew doctor simply pushes the starting button. Based upon your Computer God brain on the moon, which records progress in your systematic butchery, your butchery is continued. Exactly. Systematically. The Computer God Operating Cabinet has many robot arms, with electrical and laser beam knife robot arms. With fly-eye TV cameras watching your whole body, every part of you is monitored - even through your Frankenstein Controls! Synthetic blood; synthetic instant-sealing flesh and skin, even synthetic electrical heartbeat to keep you alive are some of the unbelievable Computer God Instant Plastic Surgery Secretsâ.

"You are the highest, most intelligent electrical MACHINE in the Universe!"

~From the output of Francis E. Dec

We need laws against this shit

[dbIII]

required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles

I think we need governments to step in and make such intrusion illegal. It's not just a matter of expecting people to be canny enough to give snoops a fake profile.

Yes, big government, nanny state and all that with such a move to protect the kiddies from the cold winds of capitalism unfettered by the morality we've relied on to make capitalism work.
Hey libertarians out there, you are getting the world you wanted. How's it looking?

Re:We need laws against this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles

I think we need governments to step in and make such intrusion illegal. It's not just a matter of expecting people to be canny enough to give snoops a fake profile.

Yes, big government, nanny state and all that with such a move to protect the kiddies from the cold winds of capitalism unfettered by the morality we've relied on to make capitalism work.
Hey libertarians out there, you are getting the world you wanted. How's it looking?

No problem. Just tear down the apartments and put something else up instead that has fewer government restrictions/controls.

Don't worry about where you'll live now.

The army's up the road
Salvation a la mode and
A cup of tea

Way to mess with somebody

[Anonymous Coward]

Just open a some social media accounts through thousand proxies, use their pictures and names start writing posts like "oh man, another collection agency letter", "why my marijuana doesn't grow, is the lighting insufficient?" and "gambled the rent money again, maybe I should return to prostitution" and watch them not getting an apartment or a job ever again. Even if the accounts are eventually closed, the company probably still has the old reports.

Soo... I believe I have pointed out a slight problem with this little data gathering.

Just set up fake accounts?

[wardrich86]

How hard can it be...

As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

More like "British idiots with a website haven't considered even the first thing about the legality of what they are proposing".

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but there is absolutely nothing on there that does not need to be on there. These exist purely so that I have something that I can put down on forms for job applications etc.

Job applications? Who requires such a thing? There is no way I would give an employer this information.

Two can play at this game

[DarkLordBelial]

Director: Benjamin William Stubbs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/be...
https://www.facebook.com/ben.s...

Born 7 November 1991 and is 24 years old
Mother : Andrea Stubbs
Father : Graham Stubbs
Siblings : Lucy https://www.facebook.com/lucy.... and Jessica https://www.facebook.com/xXStu....
Home Address: Yew Tree Farm, Wetton, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, DE6 2AF
United Kingdom
https://www.google.com/maps/@5...

Director: STEPHEN PAUL THORNHILL
Born October 1964 and is 51 years old
https://www.linkedin.com/in/st...
https://www.facebook.com/steve...
Father: Roger Thornhill
Mother: Zandra Knight https://www.facebook.com/zandr...
Children: Alice Thornhill, Emily Thornhill https://www.facebook.com/emily...

Company Secretary: VICTORIA LOUISE EVANS
Born February 1966 and is 50 years old
66 Allport Road, Cannock, United Kingdom, WS11 1DY
https://www.facebook.com/vicky...
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/...

Re:Two can play at this game

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd fuck "Lucy" but will take a pass on "Emily". Seems like the others have changed their FB privacy settings already. Shame, I got a boner tingle over the secretary's name :)

Re:Two can play at this game

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yeah! https://www.facebook.com/victoria.l.evans.35

Sigh.

[ledow]

Breach of the Data Protection Act. Even employers cannot ask you to do this, and not providing service if the user refuses to allow it will see you in court too.

Honestly, that's a business with a life expectancy of precisely one lawsuit threat.

No, this isn't going on in Britain.
No, it's nothing to do with Big Brother.

It's a company being stupid and knowingly doing illegal stuff that, when the Data Controller finds out, he'll nail them to the wall for. It has absolutely no basis is reality, even if some people were stupid enough to give them access.

Re:Sigh.

[Rick Zeman]

Breach of the Data Protection Act. Even employers cannot ask you to do this, and not providing service if the user refuses to allow it will see you in court too.

Honestly, that's a business with a life expectancy of precisely one lawsuit threat.

No, this isn't going on in Britain.
No, it's nothing to do with Big Brother.

It's a company being stupid and knowingly doing illegal stuff that, when the Data Controller finds out, he'll nail them to the wall for. It has absolutely no basis is reality, even if some people were stupid enough to give them access.

Sure, the data controller will do that--if they were providing their services in Britain. Since this is a US journalist (implicitly) talking about its use in the US, nothing says that they're running afoul of British law.

The price of free

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, here are the real world consequences so many of us have been trying to warn others about for years, ever since it was revealed just exactly what companies like Google and Facebook were doing to our privacy. If their behavior and business practices are allowed to continue unchecked, it will get much, much worse, and currently our lawmakers are more on board with sharing in the profits than they are with protecting our liberties. We have done this to ourselves with our own laziness and addiction to instant gratification.

Super creepy and gross

[f00zbll]

Anyone find that to be super creepy, wrong and just gross. BigData makes this possible, but don't be a dick or creepy ass fuckwad. Some people just have no sense of personal space or being a decent human being.

Natural consequences

[mad7777]

As evil as this idea seems, one must temper the outrage with an understanding of landlords' motivation to do such a thing. The reason is clear: tenants can be very difficult to evict in case of non-payment. This sort of thing is just the natural consequence of laws that over-protect tenants, leading landlords to seek their own means of protecting their interests. Idem for employers.

Re:Natural consequences

[mad7777]

Good thing they don't scan Slashdot posts... yet.

Re:Natural consequences

[MitchDev]

BULLSHIT

This is greedy, overreaching, bullying extortion...

Re:Natural consequences

[godrik]

Isn't there is insurance for that? Isn't it simply one of the risk in being in the renting market ?

If one is uncomfortable with that kind of risk, maybe they should not be in that business.

Re:Natural consequences

[mad7777]

I don't know much about it, not being a landlord in the UK (or anywhere else, for that matter), but I'm guessing that, since at least some landlords seem to be interested in this service, this insurance, even if it does exist, doesn't cover 100% of lost rent. Besides, buying such an insurance policy is just a way of managing the risk. The risk of non-payment still exists, and must be assumed by somebody. All you've done here is to pass the responsibility to the insurance company, who would presumably also require use of this evil service. As for "not being in that business"... yes. And the more "protected" renters are from their own insolvency, the fewer landlords there will be, and the higher the rents will be in accordance with the natural law of supply and demand. Problem solved? Not so much...

Re:Natural consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make it voluntary. Want to rent? Sure please deposit $reasonable amount + 20% and rent is $anonther reasonable amount + 20%. Accept use of this service and I'll knock off 30% off both values. How's that?

Asking to VIOLATE FB/etc T-o-S ?

[redelm]

I'm surprised lawyers aren't all over this. Granting anyone else access to your FaceBook, InstaGram, or worse, SlashDot account login information is against the Terms-of-Service, as is using it in an insecure way (known hazardous friends). FB lawyers actually have a cause-of-action as someone is inducing their customers to break their contracts.

No different from employers, landlords could easily face discrimination lawsuits. But more likely to fear FB who can marshall endless legions of lawyers. I'm somewhat surprised they have not to protect their userbase and reputation.

Lorem ipsum

[Martin S.]

Very strangely their site is full of Lorem ipsum, got the feeling this is either deliberately creating a faux controversy for farming inbound links or perhaps just a massive troll.

ftw

[AndyKron]

fuck the world

Potential employers

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had potential employers ask for that info. I turned them down, I have personal conversations on those media. Personal issues of family members have been discussed. NO you don't get to crawl through that.

WTF

[MitchDev]

WTF is going on with these criminal scumbags? Enough, kill the landlords demanding this of tenants. Break out the torches, pitchforks, and guillotines already.

Re:WTF

[noshellswill]

Not just "little general"  landlords  need to be "softened up" ... but the pussy coders who pimp their mafia-esque wares. Everybody knows what  phys-bang-wuss coders are ---  snatch-purse libertarians you know ---  all except Russian coders.  Not rocket science. An historian observes, butchering off a few dozen rent-scum coders would have a salutary effect on the apt-renting process. True in Britain true in France, true in Bloombergs underpants. 

Wrong on many facts.

[Martin S.]

The regulator is called the information commissioner, not the data controller, who is the person at the company legally responsible for compliance. The data subject is well, the subject of the data.

The Data Protection Act applies were either the data controller or the data subject are UK entities. So the personal data of Americans or any anybody is legal protected when held by a UK company.

This company is clearly acting illegally and subject to a £6k fine per person per breach.

Re:Wrong on many facts.

[ledow]

And giving that they've been fining their own NHS hospitals, schools, courts, etc. hundreds of thousands of pounds, for breaches much less severe - not even including medical data for instance, but just names, email addresses and maybe a postcode to the wrong people - then it's hard to imagine this won't be enforced quite harshly on an entity so liable.

Hell, in one case, a hospital was fined £100,000 because it couldn't prove that it DID NOT HAVE sensitive data encrypted properly on a disk that it sent in the post that was lost. Not even that it had been lost, or had data, but that they couldn't prove that the known-lost did HAD definitely been encrypted or what personal data would have been on it.

I work in schools - the DPA is scary stuff and my boss (our data controller, you're correct on that), issues edicts on it on a regular basis. Case law even gives PERSONAL LIABILITY now. I can go to jail or be fined for handling data in ways I shouldn't be doing in my job, irrespective of whether my employer "gave me permission to", if I fail to act sensibly with it.

Even someone typing in a list of our kid's names into a non-EU website to let them play a game is such a breach of the DPA that we have disciplined staff, deleted the data, shut down the service and removed staff access to it. Unless you can prove that they are operating under UK or EU data protection laws, it's your arse on the line for any "personally identifiable data" (i.e. a name and a date of birth).

Totally Illegal

[gurps_npc]

And they are too stupid to know it.

The privacy laws make it illegal for the landlords to ask AND also illegal for the anyone working for the land lords to ask those things.

No company is allowed to break the law merely because they have a contract from their victims saying they can.

Otherwise landlords would have you sign such a contract before you rent a place.

It's not so simple

[HexaByte]

Depends on where you live. In some places, a squatter is simply removed by law enforcement. In others, a squatter may be removed in a body bag as the homeowner comes back to find someone "burglarizing" their home. Don't try that in Stand Your Ground states!

Understand the subject line?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could they write a more confusing subject line? For a while, I thought the story was about some startup that was trying to rent out space in an old strip mine in Britain, using Facebook or something. "AirBnB for strip mines" maybe.

Data Protection Act

[nick_davison]

"As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report"

The data protection act, 1988, says they are.

You can naively write whatever you feel like into a ToS. But it won't hold us to the first even cursory legal challenge.

The ToS can say, "You grant the landlord the right to enter your apartment and invoke droit de signeur whenever you are passed out drunk." It doesn't make it true or remotely enforceable.

Re:Data Protection Act

[Rick Zeman]

"As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report"

The data protection act, 1988, says they are.

You can naively write whatever you feel like into a ToS. But it won't hold us to the first even cursory legal challenge.

The ToS can say, "You grant the landlord the right to enter your apartment and invoke droit de signeur whenever you are passed out drunk." It doesn't make it true or remotely enforceable.

In Britain. Not in the US.

No Land Tax

[monkeyxpress]

The cost of brown field site development is one issue, but not really the major one. My wife has worked on a number of building refurbishments (they are extremely common in London), and they are not that difficult, expensive, or slow to complete vs new builds. Indeed, the cost of land is so high in London now, that it shouldn't make a difference anyway. Provided the cost of cleaning up the brownfield site is less than the greenfield equivalent value, the development still makes economic sense.

Rather, the main problem is that there is virtually no cost to just sitting on land in the UK. Property rates are incredibly low, and there is no land tax. For many properties now, rent would barely cover depreciation and management fees, so it is simpler to just leave the property empty. Similarly, why go to all the risk of building housing on an empty site when this makes you maybe 1/10 of the money you are making from annual capital gains. Doing actual construction has much more risk than doing nothing, and the returns are unlikely to be worth having to deal with contractors and suppliers.

Just visit the ghost streets of the west end, or Stratford (which 3 years on from the olympics is still releasing housing at a glacial pace) to see how this all works.

The London market is fundamentally being squeezed by land banking. The way to fix it would be with a tax on the unimproved value of land, with the proceeds used to build social housing, but the trouble the govt has now is that enough middle class people are tangled up in potential negative equity situations that they cannot let the bubble collapse.

My pick is a sterling crisis, and the BoE being forced to raise rates to defend the currency. This will wipe out all the middle class hanger-ons, clearing the way for a democratic re-adjustment of the land usage system.

Re:No Land Tax

[Xest]

Yep, I think you're exactly right. Perhaps one solution would be to create an unused property tax, and peg it to the appreciation price of land in an area +10% or something to force development.

London is also somewhat of a special case though, the UK is almost begging for it's capital to be moved Brasil style to redistribute housing demand and spread out the pressure and balance it across the country, though that'll never happen of course. Alternatively I think it's South Africa that has 3 capital cities to force distribution of the pressure on people being drawn to capitals.

Re:No Land Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, the main problem is that there is virtually no cost to just sitting on land in the UK. Property rates are incredibly low, and there is no land tax. For many properties now, rent would barely cover depreciation and management fees, so it is simpler to just leave the property empty. Similarly, why go to all the risk of building housing on an empty site when this makes you maybe 1/10 of the money you are making from annual capital gains. Doing actual construction has much more risk than doing nothing, and the returns are unlikely to be worth having to deal with contractors and suppliers. ... The way to fix it would be with a tax on the unimproved value of land

You really, really don't want this (as stated).

It will lead to massive over-development, and create a whole host of other problems. Just look at places that have high property taxes ...

Instead, the tax should be waived on land that is in a wild state (with an appropriate definition of 'wild'), with an opportunity given (perhaps 20 years) to return land to a wild state, with some sort of mechanism to deal with the obvious attempts that might be made to evade ...

Lose Business Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. The most powerful review on these landlords is in their policy, not on social media.

Hey Seriously? Slashdot editors Take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit acting like newbies and let your readers add the word creepy by themselves. Just the facts, man. So it will remain "news" and not "opinion" for nerds who believe it or not can grok an opinion for themselves

has anyone ever looked up the guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-thornhill-204a4813

"I am a highly experienced entrepreneur who runs a corporate finance business alongside launching 3 really exciting new ventures. With my CF hat on, I advise SME's who want to effect change in their business: acquiring, selling, restructuring (positive more than negative), fund raising and also provide non exec services. My 3 business interests are U18Connect, which is an online family community business enabling financial education for our younger members of society. Hello Soda Asia is an Asia based business which provides a new social media profiling product into a variety of industry verticals and for a variety of use cases. ScoreAssured is a UK business providing interpretation and reporting of social media based information to aid decision making processes in letting, recruiting, dating, gaming. see these businesses on www.u18connect.com; www.hellosoda.asia and www.tenantassured.com. This keeps me busy..."

Don't comply

[DamnRogue]

Why on earth would anyone volunteer information to their landlords about which social media services they use?

"List your active social media accounts: 'I have no accounts to which I can grant you the requested access.'"

This doesn't even constitute lying on the application. What are they going to do - manually scan popular social media platforms for accounts that appear similar to you?

From their website....

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum at consectetur sem, eget tempus lacus. Curabitur at cursus est. Suspendisse lectus lorem, porttitor sodales porttitor ac, dapibus eu lorem. Nullam in sodales dolor.

As a landlord/employer I would be totally sold by that irresistible sales pitch!

Landlords?

[Anonymous Coward]

And i thought landlords entering an apartment without consent or appointment were violating the law.
Actually i dont see a point in this other than to move social media accounts into a protected section by coming up with the proper law.

On the other hand... any tenant is a problem to a landlord, because unfortunately they tend to use what they pay for instead of solely paying.

Die spinnen, die Briten!

Double edged sword

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I hate people/companies intruding into anothers personal life, landlords do have more than a little reasoning to be careful about their tenants. I've known a few people who rented out an old family home, lake house, etc and virtually all of them came back with horror stories. People cutting holes in walls for a TV, letting their pets use the whole house as a bathroom, ripping out parts of the floor to run some random electrical wiring, the list goes on and on. The regulations generally "protecting tenants rights" don't help much either (at least from the landlords perspective) as even if you know a tenant is doing horrible things to your property you often have no legal recourse to stop as kicking them out can take months. Yes, tenants need to be protected from abusive landlords. But landlords need protections from abusive tenants as well.

my new start up

[slazzy]

My new startup automatically creates picture perfect fake profiles over time to give to future employers, landlords etc.

New Startup

[0ld_d0g]

We need a new startup that creates fake profiles for everyone to use for this purpose.

In the USA, wouldn't the FCRA apply?

[BUL2294]

So, in the USA, I'm curious to know why the poster doesn't think the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) wouldn't apply in this case? If this entity pieces together an "ability to pay" score, based on something I wrote ("oh, I can't pay my bills this month because my pregnant wife & I were boozing way too much!"), wouldn't that data be a credit report? And, the FCRA is written in a way that if any part of a report contains a credit report or score, which may also include ancillary data points like employment, statements by others, medical tidbits, etc., the whole thing is a credit report... Which means, for a denial, the landlord has to provide the credit reporting agency info: "Score Assured". In addition, Score Assured has to provide a free report, once a year, to any US resident who asks, or whenever their data is used in a denial action...

Kinda makes me want to rock the boat, send them a letter containing an FCRA free credit report request, and see what happens...

Orwellian...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very disturbing, and I see no way to prevent it. I guess you can close all your social media accounts, and re-open under pseudonyms and then lie and say you don't use social media, but really, why should I have to do this just to rent?

And how useful is a pseudonymed account anyway? You can't prove it's actually 'you' and you can't friend someone who isn't using a pseudonym for fear of the link being made, and the pictures you post could be used to identify you anyway.

Plus, deleting your current 'real' account doesn't help. The internet never forgets.

Frankly, I think we should be able to post using real information, without having to fear that information will be used against us. Automated systems to scrape and analyze that information should really be banned outright, but I don't know how you would enforce it, especially when companies like facebook are selling the data anyways.

Re:Orwellian...

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned that lesson in 1995. Use my real name online? FUCK THAT.

Being "forgotten" by deleting accounts can work as long as you're not internet famous, and anybody who is internet famous would rather die than be forgotten, with rare exceptions like Angie Varona (epic leaked titties NEVER FORGET!!!)

I'd never use this service as a landlord

[Anonymous Coward]

This is beyond creepy. My tenants are my customers, not people to be squeezed for every dollar that they have, and poke my nose into their lives. I offer slightly below market rents (to undercut the competition), and I only care about them taking care of the property like mowing the grass, and not putting holes in the walls, and paying their rent in full and on time each month.

What they do outside of that, isn't my business, and I don't want it to be.

This of course, is why I have 100% occupancy, and I'm easily able to renew a lease with a slight increase of rents without issue.

Facebook.comcreate.new.profile...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if they do this to you where you live, just create a new profile on FB, or Twitter or whatever, do only whatever it is they demand with your fake account, and then never touch it again. Anyone who views it will know it's a BS fake FB account, and so you'll have complied with the requirements, and you won't ACTUALLY have to comply. If, for example, your name is Joseph Q. Public, make the new account Joe Q. Public, or Jo Que Public, etc., write a honey-dripping, glowing review, make sure it's obvious that you're being deliberately smarmy, like this:

"I have lived for 6 years now at Shi Thole Flats, and I've got to say OMG this is just the BEST accommodations the British Isles have to offer! You couldn't PAY me to move from here to Buckingham bloody Palace, so much do I adore this place, even if you tossed in a complementary set of crown jewels, and declared me King for Life of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales! The paint on the walls is just the perfect color, the wallpaper is without flaw! The 389 square feet of useable floor-space far exceed my tiny, insignificant space needs, while the draftiness of the place offers plenty of fresh air year-round!"

In truth though, such requirements would give-away to anyone who can see your profile, where you live, which by itself should make this utter ballocks illegal for them to pull.

I hope they get sued, shut down, and while I'm at it, that the people responsible for this get Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Another reason social media is flat/declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like this will be the gradual death knell of Facebook in the same way that the Snowden leaks impacted US-based data centers.

When people realize that their social media is being used against them, surprise....no more social media. Like most folks, once you stop logging on, cut the cord, whatever you find that the world still turns, and that aspect of your (online) life that you thought was so critical...really isn't. Zuck better get on this

Non-discrimination laws are tyranny

[mi]

And they're not; they just can't refuse service for specific reasons.

Why? Should a girl be required to explain to government, why she spurned two Black would-be suitors, but accepted the affections of an Asian?

The government must not be allowed to discriminate between citizens. Private parties should be free to do and be whatever they wish — including being bigots.

If you can't find something he's doing wrong, you have no legitimate reason to not serve him.

Sure. That's the rationale. My point is, it is still a violation of my freedom. I should not have to even have a reason — much less have one somebody else finds satisfactory.

The idea was sold to us 50 years ago on the promise of racial harmony. It failed to deliver that — as do most things, for which the price is liberty. It not only did not bring about racial harmony, it gave the government a heavy club to use against businesses and corporations. How about you just give us your customers' data, and we would not have to look into why your workforce is so disproportionally White?

The natural next step of that decades-old failed proposal you keep believing in is ensuring people do not reject not just customers, but would-be friends and partners for the "wrong" reasons. Are you prepared to defend this too?

Re:Non-discrimination laws are tyranny

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Should a girl be required to explain to government, why she spurned two Black would-be suitors, but accepted the affections of an Asian?

How can anyone reasonably equate running a business with deciding who to marry?

Oh well, at least the fact that you led with this ludicrous piece of LOLgic spared me from having to wade through the rest of your drivel.

Re:Non-discrimination laws are tyranny

[mi]

How can anyone reasonably equate running a business with deciding who to marry?

I'm not equating them. But I do not see an argument, which can justify banning racial discrimination in business, that can not also be applied to banning racial discrimination in choosing friends and suitors.

Can you cite one?

having to wade through the rest of your drivel

If you needed an excuse, I would've accepted a note from your parents...

Re:Non-discrimination laws are tyranny

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, one is to do with economics, the other personal relationships. Pretty obvious really. Perhaps you need to get out of your mother's basement and meet real people and find out how the world actually works?

Excellent Idea!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the posts are public then you have no expectation or right to privacy.

And who wouldn't like to know exactly what kind of tenant they're getting? This is a no-brainer!

Tenants...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO this is a good thing. There are a lot of trashy tenants out there who will put on a good face, move in, and then destroy the place and either be late with rent or not even pay it, and they are way too fucking hard to get rid of for landlords to go around blindly trusting them.

Right to Be Forgotten

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of those who don't think right to be forgotten laws should apply to criminal cases and newspapers.

It should, however, apply to social media.

Why not just

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Why not just tell them you don't have any social media accounts? Unless you're one of those fools who keeps your FB open to the entire world, the best they can do is say "well what about this page with your name on it?" and you say "must be somebody else!" How are they going to prove otherwise?

UK Data Protection Act

[ytene]

In 1998 the UK Government enacted national legislation in support of an EU directive regarding data privacy. Whilst data privacy is being reviewed by the EU, the DPA (1998) still applies in this instance. Among the provisions of the Act are a series of Data Protection Principles, including this one:-

"Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes."

Now the only problem here is that the provision exists as a relationship between the private individual and the company that is given their data. In this case that would be, for example Facebook. The data, however, was given for the expressed purpose of "social networking" [for example]. Unfortunately, there is no clear indication of how the law would read this: "Score Assured" are going to argue that any information made publicly available, with the consent of the user, is therefore "fair game". I'm not aware of a legal test case that challenges this, but in addition to principle #2, how about principle 7:-

"Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data."

The question is: would the actions of "Score Assured" amount to unauthorised or unlawful processing? Even if a Court were to rule that this was the case and adjudge the actions of "Score Assured" to be unlawful, the private individual is likely to only have a grievance against whichever social network posted the data.

However, one possible avenue that the social networking site could take to protect against this might be the simple addition of language on their site that says, "Individual Users of this site post information which is offered with strict terms and conditions applied. Viewers are cautioned to check the terms and conditions associated with each user profile before attempting to extract, reproduce, store, transmit, process, re-use, sell or otherwise attempt to manipulate data from this site..."

This - or something similar - if placed on a social network site, would be sufficient to make it clear to parasitic companies like this that they can't simply harvest data and use it any way they like.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Private Social Media" is an oxymoron.

If you're putting your life up for display on social media for the whole world to see, then you're just a moron. Shit like this is why.

Shop elsewhere then

[Anonymous Coward]

Shop elsewhere then or make a fictitious FB page that's in YOUR favour :)

Algorithms can be manipulated too.

Don't criticize former landlords

[anti-disney]

I'm sure if a landlord sees that a potential renter is in a dispute with his/her former landlord and talked about it on social media or simply said that they disliked their former landlord, their new landlord may decide against renting to them even if they have great credit and have never had troubles with renters in the past.