Important Files
Just as Critical as Your Credit Report
By Daniel Muniz
A credit score dominates nearly every facet of your life such as
obtaining a mortgage and a car loan. It even dictates the more
mundane things like getting cable TV, a telephone, or even a
security monitoring system.
As a result, a lot of attention has been devoted to encouraging
the public to review their credit reports for accuracy and
completeness. In addition, with the soaring rise in identity theft,
it is crucial to examine your credit profile for fraud and mischief.
However, a credit report isn’t the only type
of file that you need to know about.
Today, there are plenty of other huge
databases that keep tabs on many aspects of your life that you may
simply be unaware of. These repositories of your personal
information are:
●
Insurance Claims for Your House and Automobile
●
Bounced Checks
●
Medical Records
●
Rental History
●
Employment History
And much like the credit bureaus, the
companies that maintain these huge databases sell your personal
information to third parties. Consequently, you may be denied
insurance, a bank account, an apartment, or even a job because of
the data (accurate or not) listed in these profiles.
Just as the Fair and Accurate Credit
Transactions Act (FACTA) of 2003 requires credit bureaus to provide
you a free annual copy of your credit report, this law also
obligates these other companies to give you a yearly perusal of the
files they keep on you.
It is important for you to exercise your right
to know what kind of information resides in these databases and who
is maintaining them since so much of your future is contingent upon
them.
Insurance
Almost everything involving insurance with your car and house is
tracked and catalogued. Too many claims for house repairs could deny
you from getting homeowners insurance, which may prohibit you from
selling your house.
And auto insurers can also easily obtain your
claim history. Insurance Services Office (ISO) and its larger
competitor ChoicePoint, are companies that provides summaries of
your auto and homeowners claims to insurers,
Checking
ChexSystems dominates this field by tracking every bounced check. An
overwhelming majority of financial institutions rely on the reports
provided by ChexSystems to grant customers checking accounts.
Medical Data
Yes, there are databases that track your personal information about
your physical condition and if you have applied for policies for
life, long-term care, health, and even disability. The Medical
Information Bureau consists of members of around 600 companies that
provide a service to the insurance industry in rooting out fraud and
lying.
Tenant History
Although your credit report still plays a huge role in determining
if you are approved for a rental of a house or an apartment, there
is not a dominate player in firms that maintain databases of
tenants. The larger screening companies are Registry Safe-Rent and
U.D. Registry.
Background Screeners for Employment
This is a fuzzy area that is not covered by FACTA since these firms
do not maintain a permanent profile on you from a database that they
maintain. Instead, these screeners rely on the numerous databases
already available, such as the ones listed. These outfits (from a
one man office to a huge corporation) put together a one-time
snapshot of a report on your background.
How comprehensive such a report is really depends on how much
someone is willing to pay. Quite a bit of your public information,
convictions and judgments are already available for anyone to
peruse. Personal information from these huge databases is available
for a third party to purchase.
Summary
Overall, it is kind of scary on how much of your personal
information resides in these databases as well as how much is
available through third parties.
During a recent
congressional inquiry of ChoicePoint, a number of representatives
were quite surprised on how these private firms are able to track
such personal data especially since the government is strictly
forbidden by federal law from doing the same thing.
Checking your credit report is important but
finding out what kind of files other companies have on your can also
be quite an eye opening experience.
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