In the past many years I have only been turned down for 1 travel card I have applied for (and I have applied for a lot of them). It was during the Olympic promo for the US Bank business card. You see I have my ARS blocked or locked down – that is, they can not provide information to banks about how many credit cards I have ever applied for per my phone number. This seems to only apply to business cards with US Bank for now as I was just recently approved for a personal card I really wanted but more on that later on. The point is banks, even today, are using more than just your FICO score to see if they want you as a customer. What could be next?
We create a treasure trove of data each day we tweet, post, call, shop, shop at a portal, like on Facebook and on and on. All of that public data is out there somewhere stored. Google tracks a dizzying amount of information and you have to go in and manually clear this stuff if you don’t want them to keep it (one would assume for their benefit as much as yours). Could all this social interaction one day be examined and cost you credit card approvals? Take a look at what one site TotallyMoney.com says in part:
” Keywords within Facebook statuses – Companies can search for specific keywords. For example, repeated use of words such as ‘party’ ‘trashed’ or ‘wasted’ can be flagged up and cause concern for lenders.”
And the above is only one of many examples they use in their interesting map of all the interaction that could, maybe, one day impact if an institution wants to extend credit to you. Kinda scary right?
Now clearly there is so much, for now, blocking this from happening, but many consumer protections may be done away by the “stroke of a pen” in the current environment. Rules in place now that really help you and I could be removed in favor of much less regulation for banks and other financial institutions.
So should any of this scare you into altering your course of action on the web? Maybe. You have already seen some of what once was very public as to MS having gone underground or onto small PVT web sites or in my case with some bits I just call and chat PVT with a few individuals. Sure my blog is not an MS blog, but I do use this and other ideas as part of my travel enthusiast mix. There are things I do not ever post on the blog and only share them at events like FTU Seattle soon or the Chicago Seminars each fall. Some things are just better off the web. And that is my point.
It really just is a matter of time before more falls into place to impact us. So start thinking about this now is the bottom line. Consider, as you always should anyway, what you post, click, like, friend, join or say on the web. You never know who may be watching or tracking or mining what you do! – René
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