The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

(employees.theworknumber.com)

16 points | by firefoxd an hour ago ago

15 comments

  • northernsausage 15 minutes ago

    What is your S̶o̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ C̶r̶e̶d̶i̶t̶ Work Number score?

  • cultofmetatron 33 minutes ago

    I see no way this could go wrong at all.

    • eru 28 minutes ago

      Seems like a souped up credit score? With pretty much all the pros and cons of that existing system.

      • smolder 13 minutes ago

        You can't mention that there are pros and cons and not mention that the cons vastly outweigh the pros, with any credibility.

      • ventana 20 minutes ago

        Except in the credit report they only list your lenders and how much money you owe, and your payment history, and it's technically possible to not get any credit and have no information, or at least no recent information, in your credit report. In The Work Number, they not only list your employers, but also all your paychecks, and it's hardly possible to opt out.

  • ventana 27 minutes ago

    When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder.

    Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is just wow.

    First of all, I noticed that American Express casually requests my report a few times per year. Well, I guess, if I lose my job, they will know soon! Besides Amex, the only other requests were the background checks when I actually applied for jobs, so everything else is fine.

    But you know what else is there? All my fucking paychecks for all companies I used to work for here in the US. Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.

    Looking forward for the moment when all this data is leaked, because, you know, Equifax has some history [1].

    [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/equifax-data-breach-...

    • mwill 17 minutes ago

      Funnily enough, if you go to the FAQ, under the heading "Can I opt out of having my information on The Work Number?" it straight up starts with "No.", full stop and all.

    • Barbing 15 minutes ago

      Dear Equifax,

      Add to my report that I said: You suuuuckkk!

    • lotsofpulp 22 minutes ago

      >Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.

      Nowhere in US law does it say your employer has to keep any of that information private.

      • ventana 16 minutes ago

        Sure, not all good laws are given. Must take a good public campaign or maybe a big leak for the law like that to appear. I would think California will be one of the first states to adopt a law like that, similar to how they now forbid to ask about your current salary when interviewing you for a job [1].

        [1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

  • charlieyu1 28 minutes ago

    Should not be legal.

    • rustcleaner 16 minutes ago

      No, it shouldn't be. I agree with you.

  • sschueller 17 minutes ago

    I guess you don't need to be an authoritarian country. Just capitalist with no regulation...

    • alansaber 13 minutes ago

      State consolidates power or a few megacorps. Unfortunately the middle ground (approximate balance of power) is always tenuous

    • rustcleaner 8 minutes ago

      Big banks growing up around a central bank is not capitalism, it's financialism.

      Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens, and a capitalism becomes possible again. As it stands now it's the money printers, and those adjacent, who hold the power.

      Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again. As it stands now they serve those who have the ability to leverage the printing press, and that's not you or I.

      Addendum: finance is not capital. Capital is the structures used to produce goods. Finance in our system is contractual trickery used to represent capital. To pull from Baudrillard: if capital is the land, finance is the map.