Which would you rather give up — the lowest interest rate or your personal privacy?
Our lust for low cost money above all us is bringing new assaults to our privacy.
An FTC suit against CompuCredit offers reveals a credit scoring mechanism that Donna Fox, myself, consumer advocates and politicians have suspected—purchasing behavior, not just purchase repayment, matters.
CompuCredit monitors spending in order to reduce open credit lines based on where their cards are used.
Among the line reducing locations: tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices.
CompuCredit maintains that the FTC’s lawsuit is without merit by saying "Everyone’s Doing It":
Rohit H. Kirpalani, CompuCredit’s general counsel, says
"These scoring models are commonplace across the industry."
The biggest worry for Credit Millionaires, beyond replacing the C’s of credit with:
* Color
* Creed
* Citizenship
* Conformity and
* Consumer Choices
Is how readily does our entrepreneurial purchase behavior cause us to lose our lines-of-credit?
Will your repeatedly buying large amounts of rehab material at Lowes, Home Depot, or Menard’s flag you as a real estate investor, contractor, or developer?
Will your being on autoship for a network marketing company get you flagged as using your personal card for business?
The possibilities are endless.
So while the fear that the credit scoring system may bias their calculation to weed out borrowers based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religious or political affiliation, Donna Fox and I are very concerned it will be used in the ever growing anti-preneur movement.
While the concerns are real, Donna Fox and myself are not the type to report gloom and doom since we believe these "stops" to really be Obstacle Illusions.
In this case, the responses are obvious.
1) Be willing to pay a little more for your funds.
Remember it’s not COST OF FUNDS, it’s RETURN ON INVESTMENT.
One of the best solutions is to use convenience checks and deposit the needed money in your checking account. Then write checks or where possible pay with cash!
2) Focus on real business lines of credit.
Work on building actual business lines of credit so your entrepreneurial purchasing behaviors are normal and not cause for alarm.
You can do this for yourself over time, with a little help from Donna and myself in our weekly coaching program, or you can work with some of our vendors who will as much "Do it for you" as possible.
and
3) Join consumer advocacy groups in advocating these spying like practices stop.
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