Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Oh no... it's the future.
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."
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.
Who did what now?
To rent this flat you must own an Amazon Echo and grant us access to everything you've said to Alexa?
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
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.
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.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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..."
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
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.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
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.
Fuck that. My tenants lives are their own business.
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.
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.
-SR
I don't. Nor do I have most of the others.
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 "
No, it's probably in a museum.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
... 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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
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.
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.
If the landlord thinks this is a good idea, be thankful. Why? Because you don't want to rent from such a jerk.
What part of "British Startup" made you think that the USA's constitutional amendments would have any relevance whatsoever?
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 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.
How hard can it be...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Might makes right irrelevant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
fuck the world
WTF is going on with these criminal scumbags? Enough, kill the landlords demanding this of tenants. Break out the torches, pitchforks, and guillotines already.
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.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
> This needs to be shut down If it's against Facebook's terms of service, couldn't Facebook sue them into oblivion?
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!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Whether SJWs see the irony or not, both groups were/are correct:
Once you step away from liberty, you lose...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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
"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.
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.
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.
And still flashing 12:00:00.
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.
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.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Because that's about the intellectual level that most SJW's can understand...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Yeah, that was my point. They're adopting the very same arguments their traditional opponents have used with no sense of irony.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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?
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Oh, sure. Only they can afford to get huge machines with a giant stainless steel blade.
All I have is this small steak knife.
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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Ah, another user snared by /.'s new AppendVaguelyRelatedLinkBot.
/. article.
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
- 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.
Nothing posted to
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.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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?
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.
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!
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. . .
My new startup automatically creates picture perfect fake profiles over time to give to future employers, landlords etc.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
We need a new startup that creates fake profiles for everyone to use for this purpose.
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...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
You have to admit though, a guillotine would be useful for cutting the watermelon...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Uhm... "allowed" and "obligated" are two different words with distinctly different meanings.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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.
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?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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.
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?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is terrible. It leads to victims of domestic violence being evicted because of their partner committing a crime against them.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
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.
Is it safe?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
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.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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.
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.
The anonymous coward who said it?
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...
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head