I don't know why any company relies on data from the big credit reporting agencies.
I pulled my credit reports for the first time just a couple of months ago, and they were all wildly different from each other, and also wildly inaccurate, each in its own way.
There was nothing bad in my report, fortunately. But just the information was so wrong. One agency had my work history all the way back to 1995, but for some reason was missing any of the jobs I had between about 1997 and 2003. One had my residency history back to 1977, but was missing the place I lived just three years ago. None of them were 100% right in any category, but always in my favor. And none of them really had a complete list of my currently open credit accounts.
One thing they all fail at is addresses. If you have a simple address like 123 Main Street, Anywhere, USA, then it's fine. But as soon as you break from that pattern by having an apartment number, or a street name with more than one word, or a street suffix other than "street" or "drive," or a directional, or a city that is commonly abbreviated (St. Paul versus Saint Paul), it all comes apart.
One place I lived had a simple address like "1234 Some Place Drive, Apartment 123B," and two of the agencies mangled it into "123 Some 12." I know addresses are hard, but both the Postal Service and Google have an API for this stuff.
- Put in a mail forwarding card with your name from a former address to a random real address like a Starbucks, Taco Bell, apartment complex w/o unit number, etc.
- Change the billing address of a credit card or utility and allow to sit for one billing cycle. Works best if you have e-statements. They will send a physical confirmation to the address and it will most likely go in the trash but not guaranteed.
- once a quarter you can update your information with the credit bureaus and they will Happily record it. Later you can say you never lived there and they will remove the info - but only from the databases used in credit decisions
These are the ones most effective because there is almost no filtering, just a bunch of automated processes collecting and distributing. Just make sure there are one or two “facts” that the data quality algorithms can use to link your “new” data with existing profiles.
if you have the time, you should make a complimentary “solution” read me page for this post.
deletion really does seem to be an unwinnable proposition, so flooding with false data is a great approach. can this be automated?
Anyway, one of the verifiers is past addresses, so this sort of thing could prove a problem when applying for jobs in the UK.
Tories gotta tory - put a private firm between people and job applications, demand they give all their ID data to that firm. Oh, and the firms all have recent mass data leaks.
It's a core part of several gov departments (passports, drivers licensing, benefits, taxes) to be able to ID people and the gov have all the data with which to do it. Crazy.
Perhaps, but I would have assumed creating a USPS mail forward under false pretenses like this would be fraudulent. They seem to take such thing seriously.
GP also mentions in a sibling comment about what to do if you need address verification for something else (which is presumably of value):
> All you need is a passport or driver’s license and a utility bill with current address dated within 60 days. Most of the time the utility bill can be a “photocopy” and you just change the date or address to what you need. DMV is about the only place that needs an original document and will be familiar with what bills from your area look and feel like (because they most likely live nearby also and routinely handle documents from people in the same area as you).
Doctoring a document like this also seems illegal.
how is value defined in this context?
Generally, in court, "value" means "market value" expressed in the currency of the court's country. Often the penalties for various levels of fraud are based on the value (= market value) of the gain -- for example, hypothetically, the law might state that if the value was under $1,000 it's a misdemeanor rather than a felony or that if the value was under $100 you can't be sentenced to prison time.
Something like my own privacy which has value only to one person (me) does not have market value.
[edit: added two paragraphs]
> but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever.
how would you do this?