@Anonymous wrote:All of Washington is former corporate lobbyists, and all current lobbyists are former politicians. It isn't just legal, it's the normal way of things.
Yes, I am cursed with a naive soul that wants to think people have integrity somewhere. They do, right?I should also mention that I've paid lobbyists for 20 years and they get the job done better than calling "my" politician, who has never really answered any of my questions.
Well I've recently given up voting altogether as my faith in that has been destroyed too. I once attended a city council meeting to complain that it was rather unfortunate that it took a police officer 50 minutes to respond to me watching someone break into my neighbor's home. I waited and waited because I know the guy and he would have done the same for me, I just didn't want to get shot protecting his TV. Finally showed up, the guy was long gone. I drove to get something to eat not fifteen minutes later and saw four cop cars parked at McDonald's. Do they all have to take lunch at the same time? I respect them and all but c'mon, someone is actively commiting a crime - you can step away from the Big Mac to help a guy out by serving and protecting. The city council sat there and listened to my story because they had to, and then said someone will reach out to me. Never heard another word from them. Lesson learned: everyone else seems to have just given up, why shouldn't I?
Sorry for the rant.
When it comes to these credit bureaus, they're even more of a sham because we're not their customers, we'd just their data. And even though the law "allows" us to get a copy of our credit report every year, it still doesn't really give us any transparency as to what the data is properly used for. Sure, you can get a list of lenders requesting the report, but even that is pretty opaque.
And not even their well protected data either. The only people that get any real transparency into the system are the people smart enough to steal it all at once. That's telling in and of itself. I think I have been informed of seven or eight data breaches in 2017 alone -- and those are just the ones that are known.
I still find it advantageous to request a copy of ALL of my reports annually if only to create a little more chaos for the companies. And if I find incorrect information, which I do on 100% of reports I request annually, I make sure they correct it -- and that they follow up with corrected reports.
Still, every year, new information is wrong, so it's a total waste of time. I wish there was a better solution for this but it's the best we have. I know how tough it is to get credit in countries WITHOUT risk management third parties involved, so I'm glad that we can get credit here easily (click of a button) and even if you blow your credit profile today, in 7-10 years it's almost good as new. That's saying something for the system.
e-Oscar makes whole sections of the law almost meaningless anyway. I don't even know why I bother with DV anymore. Freezing my profile doesn't even prevent previously agreed errors from reappearing so other than making sure I'm not a victim of the most egregious form of identity theft it is also pointless. But I think we've set the bar really low when the internet will quickly provide me with an accurate birthday/address/relatives/phone number/party affiliation with a quick Google but my credit info and FICO score (generated by an unknowable algorithm based on questionable data) is the best we can ask for.
