@CreditCuriousity wrote:LOL.. I could see MyFico having a few different view on this application. It honestly could go either way, this will be intersting on there response, but somehow I think the CC companies might have something to say in this matter as well if MyFico blesses it. They could be all for it or against it. I see benefits and drawbacks for MyFico and the CC companies I can argue for or against.. The people that would use it would be hugely helpful. Think could be a make as a super simple application (well not as simple as credit pulls db) or can do anything you can imagine being searching by CC with "Metal" content.. Start out simple, but make it scaleable and build on it over time as people request more ways of querying up the data if they make sense. Still a fairly trival part on the DB, I will admit I am not a great front end developer at all.. A database is a database though, can be done on any platform. Thinking MySql might be the best as I believe it is free, but whatever works.
TBH it could be done without myFICO's blessing same as whogavemecredit or credit pulls database, but having a moderator (quite possibly a problem anyway) or even general user put the link in his siggy would have to approved and it'd be harder to get community involvement other than repeated postings of the domain name in response to inquiries, which is only effective if there's data in there already... chicken and egg issue. It's a simple app to build with simple features and a simple backend, getting the users is the challenge. The infrastructure doesn't cost much or maybe close to $0 depending on what Imperfectfuture or even I could do on my personal office Internet, though it may be best to keep that out of awkward land too. Basic LLC, domain registration, SSL cert, AWS free tier, go! Recurring expenses not hugely expensive either... Worst case if it flops the LLC can be used for something else later.
Anyway I'd rather do this above board in all respects and with FICO's allowance as it would make getting the initial dataset so much easier. Biggest time investment once the application was built (barring feature idea implementation) would be weeding out frivolous data entry which would almost assuredly get made over time as someone's awkard idea of fun.
@CreditCuriousity wrote:
@core wrote:Yes, good idea about the searchability. We need checkboxes for:
[ ] Metal content
[ ] Comes in a black cardboard box
What I don't get though is this: One rogue individual with some light skills (possibly working for Competitor, or possibly just a troublemaker) could skew the numbers for any company any way he wishes. I haven't heard of this happening on those other sites. I wonder why not? Perhaps nobody has been bored enough. With enough traffic though (as myFICO gets), it could be well worth someone's time. When I search those other databases I get literally just a handful of hits. Imagine what someone armed with a bot and a few thousand proxies could do.
This is what IP addresses are for and can be tracked, whomever maintained this site among other measure to ensure you have less of these issues that you can implement obviously email verification is another method and many others. Very simiilar to how forums work.
Data is only as good as the data you get, so ya if people don't put declines then it is going to skew the data.. Approvals at least you could get an Idea of what it takes to get approved along with searching for APR% by scores, CL, etc... Could be such a better product then credit pulls.. Just a simple initial release would put it to shame.
Heck we could even take Credit Pulls DB data of course with there permission to populate an initial population of data really easily ...
I don't know how they'd feel about it; I'm not certain if their site makes revenue or not... actually I'd be more than fine with doing something like sharing data if that's feasible but realistically it's going to be a single source for best resolution.
Bad data can be defended against as you suggest though I'm not sold on email verification but that can be a different discussion: this should be as anonymous as possible, 3rd party merchant service we don't have to know anything about the users donating and just have to have the merchant name generic enough that wouldn't be automatically suspect on the lender billing side. I'm hesitant to log anything (not mandatory here in the US) but unfortunately without user accounts would need some metrics to defeat spammers and what not. Likely could just delete logs after a week as a compromise.
The concern is if the data set gets good, others will start using it and that might drive traffic significantly. That's the only thing I'm concerned about cost wise and I can't fund a site which starts getting real traffic and I doubt anyone would want to volunteer host that anyway. Which either means donations or advertising, and I know which one I'd rather have... or having to blackhole the scrapers. Guess there's worse things that could happen than being a victim of a website's success.
ETA: this would all be open source CC, losing money on software licenses would be silly in this implementation.
@core wrote:Weeding out frivilous entries would be impossible, even for a full-time human. Look at the entries on credit pulls. Since everyone's got the lingo down they basically all look the same, and generally lack the free-form text nature that might be a clue in other venues. It would be a trivial matter to throw together a script which pieces together a few sentences describing INQs and new accounts and reasons for denial. All in random order with random word substitutions. Even make a few typos here and there. For even greater effect pull out random sentences from credit pulls itself.
Not possible to weed out. No way, no how.
A random troublemaker might not go through the fuss. I would only do so if somebody paid me. Maybe Capital One will send me a PM offering me a CLI in exchange for doing some dirty work?
I'm pretty certain we could come up with a simple detection system based on counts from a given IP address over time... much like lenders do for inquiries. Simple DOS prevention and we set the bar incredibly low would work too.
There's ways to skin that cat if it comes to it, but everything we do on that takes more time and money, which is something this project isn't likely going to have. Could it be shut down, sure, but doubt the lenders would really care. Why would they? They don't make money on frivolous applications, quite the opposite really... and if they get advertising they don't have to pay for, that's good too.