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Comment by jaredandrews | Hacker News Reader

Yes thank you. This is my "actually it's GNU + Linux" tic, please fellow Americans (and I would be interested in learning if this problem exists in other countries) do not accept the framing that a bank giving a loan to someone they thought was you is _your problem_! It's their problem! We should not be normalizing this phrase or practice.

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> I would be interested in learning if this problem exists in other countries

In Norway you can voluntarily register as not wanting to allow credit assessments to be performed on you.

This in turn can help a bit because it results in most attempts at making loans in your name not being possible.

https://www.datatilsynet.no/regelverk-og-verktoy/sporsmal-sv...

There are four companies in Norway that do credit assessments. You have to individually register your desire to not allow credit assessments for your name with all four of these.

https://tfinans.no/blogg/frivillig-kredittsperre

But then, what protects you against someone simply requesting that your credit is unlocked and then taking loans in your name after all? Well, from what I gather one would have to use BankID to confirm that credit is to be unlocked.

So even if someone steals my passport, they will not immediately be able to unlock my credit. They’d have to jump through a bunch of hoops to also steal my BankID.

Interesting. This should be adopted by the EU. (I know Norway is not a member state but this makes good sense and that's why I would love to see the EU to adopt it.)

I imagine they already exist in EU states. I got one in Finland after my ID card was stolen and someone was trying to buy stuff on credit with my ID. Paid a small fee of like 10€ to get a two-year credit freeze. They also give you a certificate from it that you can use to verify that the black mark in your credit history is a voluntary block. Never actually had to use it, was a student back then and I didn't have any credit to apply to, mobile phone plans to buy, apartments to rent etc.

I disagree with this system, banks can instead require the exact same Auth process they'd use to unblock your "no credit" request when they want to start a new credit for anyone. Why would there be more checks to "remove block" than to "start credit"? I can think of one reason that's good for the banks.

The "locked" state should be the default, whatever extra checks they need to do to a person that has it "frozen", that should just be the default to start any credit!

If anyone has some dire need for easy credit all the time they can do the opposite and go to some "light checks" state like TSA pre-check.

In Sweden all banks require me to sign off credit requests through BankID as well, so the check can be performed but I need to ultimately sign it.

You can do this in America. It’s called a credit freeze. A problem is credit freezes can also be fraudulently lifted, but serve as a decent barrier for most run of the mill mass frauds. They’re virtually unknown and require you to independent contact each individual credit bureaus to both freeze then unfreeze.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-credit-fre...

> They’re virtually unknown...

I (and millions of other people) learned how to do a credit freeze after having our personal info leaked in the Equifax data breach of 2017:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Having that credit freeze saved me from at least two attempted frauds since then - I was notified by two credit card issuers that credit card applications in my name that I had never made were rejected because my credit file was frozen.

I wish I wrote down the un-freeze PIN codes or stored them in Bitwarden when I did this six years ago.

I'm dreading trying to recall the PINs I used when the time comes to un-freeze them.

Still glad I did it, though. However burdensome the PIN recovery process will be, I'm sure it's less stress than dealing with fraud.

European countries are ten yrs ahead of the US as far as regulations on technology are. Some people have to learn the hard way I guess...

> the framing that a bank giving a loan to someone they thought was you is _your problem_

Brings to mind the tale that jaywalking laws were the creation of early-days automobile manufacturers and dealers who wanted to clear the streets for the vehicles they wanted to sell. [0]

[0] https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

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