Your credit score IS maintained by companies! Their whole business is maintaining American credit scores. I really have no idea what their business model is.

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DoctorOW 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, the only role of the government was to issue an SSN which has been explicitly said shouldn't be used in such a manner[1].

It is a real pet peeve of mine that people take such hard stands on issues like this when it's so easy to check what's actually happening first. This thread isn't the most egregious example, but it is an example of someone just imagining a system with a big flaw and then suggesting a solution to the problem they made up.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/social-security-n...

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dwd 9 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Near instantaneous credit checks is their business model, and they operate worldwide.

Their business replies on collecting and storing vast troves of data that influence your credit score.

Were the likes of Experian and Equifax taken out of the credit system, you would see a massive credit crunch as every business that relies on them would have to manually verify anyone's credit score (which could introduce a whole new set of biases) or forego that completely.

Interestingly, when it comes to business credit checks, i.e. Financial viability and director background checks and history - this is something an LLM could very easily find red flags from publicly accessible data before forking out money for a full report.

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verzali 9 days ago | parent [-]

What do you mean they operate worldwide? There are many countries that operate without credit scores.

	▲	dwd 8 days ago \| parent [-]
		The credit score provided by someone like Equifax is just a number - cheap and quickly requested via an API. And yes, bureaus don't have operations in every country - but my point was that credit scores don't just exist in the US. Take the Netherlands, they don't use scores; rather you would request a report that details any known factors that influence creditworthiness. The difference is: - the score is a simple weighting (0-1000) that is systematically calculated by the bureau. - Without a score provided, you have to make a judgment yourself on that individual's creditworthiness from their report.

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Bluescreenbuddy 9 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Data and access to said data is their business model

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wakawaka28 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm sure that running credit checks costs money somehow. Accurate credit information facilitates profitable loans.