FICO 08 will allow authorized users on credit cards

[Anonymous]

Fair Isaac acknowledged yesterday that FICO 08 will still allow authorized users on credit card accounts:

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/piggybacking-fico-credit-score-authorized-user-1265.php 

[Anonymous]

Um ... how is FI "gaming their system" to prevent abuse? What will the criteria be in defining "abuse" and what hoops will people have to jump through in order not to BE considered "abusive?"

Or am I the only one who doesn't get it????

[MidnightVoice]

 "Fortunately, we were able to come up with technology that makes it much harder to game the system."

Possible answers - a sudden increase in number of AU tradelines brings up a flag, time since tradelines were added could be considered, time between adding tradelines.  Both should be easily incorporated, as could a "delay" before a new AU tradeline could be incorporated into the score.

I am sure there are other ways.  But piggybacking should be fairly obvious - no one spends 5 years getting ready to piggyback!

[Anonymous]

they have no way of telling  an AU is legit or not

[MidnightVoice]

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rbbyrbsn wrote:

they have no way of telling  an AU is legit or not

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No, but they have ways of incorporating illegit AUs into scoring!

[fused]

I'm not really sure how I feel about this decision.

[haulingthescoreup]

I'd rather they err in favor of allowing a few slimeballs sneak in than hurt the credit of a large demographic group that was going to be injured by this. Good for FICO.

[Watchmann]

I think it is fraud, I don't see how it can be any different.  I think FI was talked out of it by the industry.  The creditors still think they can manage this 'problem' within acceptable default rates on their accounts.  Plus, if you significantly change the system which decreases FICO scores of some legitimate folks, how does the industry treat them?  Increase interest rates or refuse them?  That takes legitimate customers out of the system.  They figured it just wasn't worth the problem.  I wonder how widespread piggybacking really is?

[Anonymous]

I wonder if the information is stored by EX, EQ, TU as to who the primary cardholder is that you're an AU on.  A simple (though far from foolproof, and would still cause some problems) way of determining legitimacy would be to compare last names on the primary & AU.  A match would indicate that the primary/AU were probably either spouses or close family members.

-MsMS

[Anonymous]

Yeah, but you might see some of that same activity in legitimate circumstances, i.e. marriage.  After we married, I added MrMS onto almost every card since he had virtually no credit history, and I've had a CC since 1999.  So his report could have looked like he was piggy-backing, as a handful of established cards suddenly add him as AU.  Okay, maybe he was piggy-backing- but spouses should be different.

-MsMS