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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

"We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default."

Wonderful. Gameable and dystopian all at the same time.

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And this is where I’m grateful for GDPR to exist.

Feels like the open market is coming up with a solution similar to China's "social credit" scoring system.

The only thing stopping it in the US is the equal credit act. Most of these “novel” credit scoring solutions are just attempts to work around the race and other prohibitions in credit scoring. The good news is that these things get shut down quickly with enough complaints. This study points out that the digital tracking is likely a violation.

If that is true ("equal credit act is the only thing stopping it in the US"), then race is the strongest factor[1] for credit scoring, so I'm not sure how China does it (Chinese population is racially homogenous)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis

The Chinese recognize race within its borders[1], additionally it may be of interest to the scorer to know who is Hui, Tibetan, or Uyghur.[2]. I don't support this I'm just noting that China is not racially homogenous.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Races_Under_One_Union [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_China

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