To paraphrase Bruce Dickinson, this thread needs more tinfoil.
Amazing how a formula is responsible for the decline and fall of modern civilization ... 
@Anonymous wrote:GEICO, Progressive and every other insurance company that I'm aware of, uses credit scores to set the rates for their insurance. Even if you were a current insured, had been insured with Company X for a decade, had had no chargeable accidents and were driving a three year old car, when the insurers began to use credit scores to determine the cost of policies, if your credit score was below what they considered optimal, your rates went up. Of course, no one at those companies will divulge the breakpoints for the different rate classes. They ARE now required to divulge that they use credit scores for rates. But that's it.
I own my own business, so, to my knowledge, I have not personally dealt with a potential employer using credit scores to screen potential employees. But I know that my kids, and some of my friends, have. I know this because, in filling out the application for a particular job, they were asked to sign a waiver allowing the potential employer to obtain their credit score.
I agree that many insurance companies use credit scores, unless state law prohibits this, as it does in several states.
Most of the time, though, on job applications, the potential employer is pulling the credit report. If a score comes along with it, that might be looked at too, but I think that hirers are looking at the reports themselves to see if there are a lot of judgments, BK's, late payments, and so forth, believing rightly or wrongly that a messed-up credit history indicates disorganization, irresponsibility, etc. btw, I don't agree that this assumption is true across the board. Plenty of people have handled credit very responsibly until one or more of the three big bombs have hit --unemployment, divorce, or uninsured/ underinsured medical costs. And of course, it's very possible that your friends and family members had their scores checked. But people often read "report" and think "score." I just checked the paperwork for my new job, and it said that they reserved the right to pull my report. No mention of score.
At any rate, I agree that there are a lot of people poking their noses into our credit profiles who don't necessarily belong there. But it's often not scores, and even if it is, that's hardly the fault of the score formula. It's just being misused.
Many of us don't consider that it would be very difficult to access credit without all this. Which of course might be a good thing in some cases. 
@Anonymous wrote:To paraphrase Bruce Dickinson, this thread needs more tinfoil.
Amazing how a formula is responsible for the decline and fall of modern civilization ...
+1
@Anonymous wrote:
The real secret to financial happiness is pay cash and stick that "cost of credit" in your pocket and not some CEO's or shareholders Swiss bank account.
Fabulous idea. More people should do it.
"On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,482 from cash users every year."
