Saturday, March 10, 2018

Another Costly Credit Crime Horror, Synthetic Identity Fraud, COULD be Avoided

...if everyone in the retailer/lender/credit reporting chain
simply DID THEIR JOB.  According to the Wall Street
Journal, 03/07/2018, fake borrowers are created, costing
many millions to the lenders who trusted Experian,
TransUnion and a now-infamous third reporting agency
which will be duly noted.  The lengthy article revealed
shocking lapses in clerical procedures which would
have eliminated much of this costly crime to lenders and
retailers, thus, to us via raised prices.

Other, smaller companies have known how to stymie
much of this faux info by, among other requirements,
disallowing  P.O. and mail box services as legitimate
billing and shipping addresses--a real, verifiable physical
address demand before sealing the deal. The decades-
long practice of eliminating jobs in favor of machines is
catching up to the USA big time: fewer humans to
process and check important information means weakness
in security and accuracy at all points in the money flow.

Interestingly, both Amazon and Discover chose not
to comment for this WSJ piece, as they too have taken
massive $$$ hits caused by not due diligence checking.
--But wait! Isn't Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, one
of the world's wealthiest people? HE CAN AFFORD
to hire fact checkers and electronic verifiers to scotch
this insidious practice.

I'm surprised what's left of my hair hasn't fallen off after
reading this explanation in the WSJ: a mere credit
application without a subsequent loan or even support
documentation can create a legitimate credit file;
randomly-issued SSA numbers are now the norm at
Social Security (some of the new random numbers will
be duplicates of actual, older SSA card holders as well as
the syn-ID made up ones). Other, quite questionable policies
and practices must be changed to eliminate many of
the time-wasting, money-losing situations we now
see.

Equifax , the biggest malfeasor in reporting history,
released the personal records of some 147 million Americans
even though told how to fix their software security
vulnerability--they simply ignored the helpful warning/advice.
Understandably, Equifax declined the Journal's requests for
comment. TransUnion and  Experian claimed it's just too hard
to tell a fake from a real person for the first time without
identifying information not on file...so I say, get it! Hire
more clerks, detectives, accountants, software gurus,
whoever can derive the true from the false. But AGAIN,
perennially boosting the profit margin (also known as
"growth", the capitalist's prime mover) is at bottom of
these shoddy, illogical excuses.

Wow. So many stupidities could be avoided by being
more concerned with error and harm, less concerned
for exponential $$$ growth...

Could be, should be, would be--sic transit gloria mundi.



2 comments:

  1. Not feeling well enough to comment as deep as I want to right now.The bran cereal and immodium are right next to me Amber. I will say this All of what you stated is very true. It may be forcing WE THE PEOPLE non ELITE into a BIT COIN or other type of economy that can totally track and control us all.

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