Is such a blacklist actually illegal or did they mistype “immoral”?
This sounds like the initial data collection which is a massive grey area IMO. The use of that data to make an approve/decline decision is where the regulations start to take effect.
No, but you need to give permission for anyone to run a credit check on you. Literally no one can legally see that info without you giving them permission to do so. Whereas anyone can sign up for this service and see info about you.
Edit - also, banks won't give you a bad score as long as you keep paying the minimum on all your credit products. And in my experience, their willingness to give you a mortgage or extend credit has more to do with your income and assets than a credit score.
Whether that is true will depend on your jurisdiction. In the U.S. at least, it is not true. In the U.S., a consumer report needs to be for a permissible purpose, but it does not always require explicit permission of the consumer. See 15 U.S. Code § 1681b, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1681b.
There is a level of transparency. It's not perfect but it;s something. This Company is obfuscating every layer, the tenants don't even know it's going on. The biggest issue here with the obfuscation is, Who is keeping the landlords honest?
There are already associations in the US that legally track tenant and landlord issues. This company is just bypassing all the regulations involved in that and pretending it's ok.
Whoever ends up moving into that place must have given the reference. So it's not optional, right?
It's the same "opt out" as opting out of paying $30K for that SUV at the car dealership. Oh, and not driving out with it either; that's done by the next buyer who coughs up $30K.
If it legal to ask for a reference, it means that, in the eyes of the law, the situation would be acceptable if every landlord in the country required one. In such a case it would still optional in the sense that one can emigrate, or go sleep on some friend's or family member's sofa.
The point is that people who don't want to give the reference will do so anyway because the circumstances force them to.
How is that relevant? Consumers don't have a choice in the matter; consent is mandatory because a place to live is a fundamental need.
Nobody gives consent for the data to be collected.
Then when you need a place to live, you have no choice but to agree to a background check using that data because virtually all landlords require it.
Landlords need tenants more than tenants need landlords. At the end of the day, you can always find somewhere to live even if it's shared tenancy or crashing with friends or family, an empty apartment just costs the landlord money.
It's in the next paragraph:
"Ries said Naborly seems to be acting as a consumer reporting agency, of which there are currently two licensed in Ontario: Equifax and TransUnion."
> "It seems like this is a blacklist that Naborly is hoping that landlords will help create by just informing on every single tenant, whether they've paid or not," he added. "It does not seem legal."
> Also, allowing landlords access to tenants' past paying habits meant the company in question was "acting as a credit reporting agency, without a requisite licence," he said.
> The process has also raised concerns from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which noted that property managers in Canada are not allowed to publish "bad tenants" lists.
How would the lawyers find out if a landlord chose not to rent to someone based on this information?
That's easy. The servers are going to record who accessed the api, what data they retrieved, and when. I wouldnt be surprised if we receive and anonymous data dump soon.