Facebook to examine your social network on behalf of lenders

Additionally, I know of two people directly in my circle of friends who have had their identities stolen in the last couple years. As part of that I know from talking to them their credit took a significant hit and they have been working to clean it up. While this patent claims to take the average, that average can be directly impacted by something like identity theft if the sample is small.

I believe a better credit scoring method would be to utilize bills and banking that are paid more often, yet not reported to agencies. For example, I pay my rent, cable, cell phone bill monthly. I also keep a balance in my bank account for rainy days. On the other hand, I only have one credit card and only use it in extreme emergency and rarely have a balance on it. My credit score is good, but could be better because of this. I would rather be judged on the bills I pay monthly rather than the bills I pay rarely. The irony of things like rent, cable, cell phone, etc... is that they don't report unless it goes to collections. There should be an "all or nothing" law. If you don't report timely payments you can't report untimely ones. That to me would be a better use of the credit reporting system.