No Credit History? No Problem. Lenders Are Looking at Your Phone Data

[pipeguy]

I have no comment on this story other than I'm glad I don't use a contract cell phone (I use a monthly prepaid because its much cheaper and buy my own unlocked phones)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-25/no-credit-history-no-problem-lenders-now-peering-...

...Fair Isaac Corp., whose FICO scores are the world’s most-used credit ratings, partnered up last month with startups Lenddo and EFL Global Ltd. to use mobile-phone information to help facilitate loans for small businesses and individuals in India and Russia....

[Anonymous]

Your friend's comment has been approved by our underwriter for a new line of credit. Amazing...

[Anonymous]

**pulls out tin foil hat... what if credit scores are used to measure popularity and social status in the future... wait they already are.

[UncleB]

I guess this could be helpful for a subset of people, but I can see how it can be quite problematic (as well as easy to 'game'). 

In my own case I'm not a heavy mobile phone user, and many the people I do call don't have great credit - it would certainly be unfortunate if I were to be judged based on their financial habits. 

I can also see how it would be easy to get a list of friends/coworkers with great credit and call them often and purposely avoid calling people with known bad credit to get the "score" to increase.