I’ve been through most of these and removing yourself really can be done. In many cases the removal is considered temporary and you have to repeat every four to ten years. It’s not possible to get off of the skip trace and debt collectors databases run by Transunion, Experian, and others - but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever.
Transunion, Experian, and others - but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever
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.
The other thing I ran into is even after you remove yourself you often still show up in lists of relations of family members and former roommates, you have to fill have their data removed also before your name drops off entirely.
- Fill out surveys at malls with your name and either a phone number or address that matches one currently in your credit file and you can supply false info for the the opposite.
- 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.
Then when you go to open a credit card or actually try to clean up your credit report, you'll need to remember which Taco Bell you randomly pretended to live at to answer security questions.
When I run into that problem I wait for the rejection mail from the creditor, then I write back with a redacted photocopy of my IDs - completely useless with everything blacked out but my name - and a copy of their letter. I say here is my redacted ID as proof of identity and a photocopy of your letter as proof of receipt so please approve me and that has worked every time so far. It makes it very easy to see where the line between security and security theater is drawn. Not that any US bank is going to win awards for security (except maybe Robinhood, they really stand out with standards based 2FA and the ability to block external ACH with a click)
sad state of affairs that this level of surgical precision and orchestration is required just to not be stalked and creeped on to incredible levels. and this doesn’t even cover the situation with respective to showing up on relatives’ 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?
UK civil service users third party identity confirmation for jobs, companiess like Experian and the Post Office - you know companies that leak personal data like a sieve.
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.
If you send any sales person an email with your email signature there is a chance they are using ZoomInfo. That tool will scrape your email for your email signature and now they can sell your very accurate data.
> - 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.
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.
It is absurd to accept something like a utility bill as a proof of anything. Even birth certificates I don’t really understand - my original birth certificate is hand typed by an IBM Selectric typewriter on common security paper and embossed with the county seal of the area where I was born. As very few people would be able to verify the seal I think it’s more or less worthless as an secure document because it could be reproduced or approximated so easily. You can obtain guides with examples of secure documents but they are large and expensive, and I’ve never seen them at retail banks or the DMV. I’m not sure how comprehensive they are either - collecting samples at the county or city level across the decades would be a Herculean task.
The legal definition, which doesn't include things like happiness/privacy/karma.
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.
This seems mildly dangerous to me for the simple reason that if you need to prove your identity to these places they’re reliant on this information... I’m thinking of when I get my free credit report yearly. Trying to track real addresses I used to live at as well as fake ones seems challenging.
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).
