@Anonymous wrote:
Interesting conversation just had with a friend. Since everyone seemingly on this board is so afraid of lenders doing AA on their cards (CLD, closures) - and these are mostly always a result of a soft pull of ones credit - I wonder how companies did SP back in he day prior to electronic CR pulls, like when the only option was to see a physical copy of the report via snail mail??
I wonder what year all the constant SP began on our credit. Honestly I almost never heard of AA happening until after 2008/09.. when it was rampant. Now it's not sporadic to be sure - but I wonder when the SP trend began for lenders or when it was not even a viable option to perform.
Credit enigma #89,009! Woooooooo
Not so. There are many folks here and elsewhere, who do not frequent these types of message boards, that are certainly not afraid of AA from a lender. But that's another topic of conversation.
It likely has always been a viable option, for the lenders. As long as there has been computerization of credit information, lenders have likely been monitoring consumer files. AMEX and Diners Club cards dates back to the 50s, Visa and MasterCard (originally MasterCharge) came along in the mid-60s. Big mainframe computers were in use at those times, and data on consumer spending habits have been tracked since those early days.
When I got my first cards in the early to mid-70s, I'm reasonably sure that my spending was tracked at that time (the internal soft pull), even though the application process was a paper application and waiting weeks for a response. Those apps were likely the hard pull, for a specific lender to see what was in other lender's files.
Keep in mind that the credit reporting agencies date back to the late 1800s, in some form or another. It was when IBM made great strides in computing power and capability in the 60s and 70s, that mass data collection became more common, and with that, the sharing of data.
Soft pull or hard pull is irrelevant. Adverse Action has been around since at least the 70s (I know this first hand! 
). Whether due to one type of pull or the other didn't matter. They did it. What does matter in this discussion, is when the CONSUMER aspect of all this became more common. Consumer awareness came about because of laws that were enacted in the 80s and 90s for their protection, and consumers became more aware of what was going on behind the scenes at the major credit reporting agencies. SP, HP, AA...they have all been going on for a long time. But I don't think one can equate an increase in SP resulting in more AA. CRAs have become more sophisticated over the years (and decades) in how they monitor consumer credit.
The hypothesis that an increase in SP results in an increase in AA is false. That is not the sole basis for an AA. It is the action of the consumer that generated the SP that also factors in. Very few of us can know the inner workings of the CRAs, and there can be rampant speculation as to cause and effect. However, anecdotally, we know that when consumers manage their credit wisely and don't draw attention to themselves, there is less of a probability of an AA than when one does something that deviates from the norm. Going back to one of your original statements, that everyone seemingly on this board is so afraid of lenders doing AA on their cards, is more probably due to folks who frequent sites such as this are more likely to take risks that John Q. Public, who never comes here (or elsewhere) would ever take. It's the very nature of the message board beast that folks become emboldened to do things that, had they NOT had been here and read something, they would be less inclined to do. The Herd Mentality effect.
If you want a specific year (or years) that caused more scrutiny to consumer financial transactions, my best guess would be probably the mid-2000s, specifically 2006-2007 just prior to the financial collapse. My guess is lenders saw it coming before the rest of us did, but were in denial...until the financial collapse actually happened.