There was so much on mine that was missing or wrong that I didn’t even bother with correcting it. Should I ever get turned down for something due to Innovis, I’ll then jump through the hoops to correct it.
EWS on the other hand is full of information some of which should be private. Some banks, like Chase and Discover, report every ACH transaction including checks and bill payments. Some (Chase, CapOne) report the account balance on the 1st of each month. I’m glad I don’t keep much money there, but it’s still ridiculous.
One more rude surprise I haven’t seen mentioned on other forums discussing the privacy atrocity that is EWS is that all banks report my email address. I use a different email address with every institution (see my privacy thread). I don’t understand why the email address associated with my banking account is of any other bank’s business, especially since they don’t do anything with that information anyway.
3 Likes
I’m a little slow sometimes, but are you saying that EWS shows each of the email addresses that you use with your financial institutions? If so, anyone looking at mine can see the naming convention I use for my email at each bank. I’d prefer that not be visible, as it not only aids in privacy, but I like to think it slightly aids in security.
I’ve never pulled EWS, but just downloaded their pdf form. At first glance, I’ve got a lot more confidence in them that I have in Lexis/Nexis.
Yes. Each and every bank account section includes information associated with that account - starting with ABA and account #s, followed by my name, address, SSN, DOB, phone number, most show an email address and some show ID# with ID type and expiration date. Nothing is xxxx-ed out.
I don’t know how much of this information is actually made available to other banks when they pull the report. There are at least two different types of inquiries on the report – one for when you open a new account, and another for when someone deposits a check you wrote.
1 Like
Perhaps I can shed a little light here on this EWS/privacy thing. I went back to my EWS report for the third time in response to scripta’s posts. As I wrote on my own EWS thread, I do business with a great many financial institutions. And as I also wrote over there, none of consequence to me even bothers to report to EWS. But allow me to be more specific:
Both Ally Bank and Compass Bank do report. And the reports and privacy breaches from those two banks are every bit as egregious as scripta states.
What is saving me, in general, is my propensity to avoid doing business with the larger financial institutions, and to avoid in particular the big money center banks. Chase, Cap One, Discover . . . . I avoid 'em . . . . for the most part. Ally is, for me, a glaring exception and what Ally is doing to me is annoying. It is bad. But I have exposure in at least two dozen other instances, other financial institutions, where there is no reporting at all. Thank God. Nobody can examine my EWS report and have any inkling whatsoever of the extent of my financial dealings.
I guess the bottom line lesson here, where EWS and privacy are concerned, is to be thoughtful about where you conduct your financial business. Smaller is better.
1 Like
Maybe we can get a thread started on what banks report what to EWS?
Do we know if opting out of information sharing (those privacy policy “yes we do share,” “no, we do not share”) has any effect on what is reported?
2 Likes
I also wondered about this. I opt out of everything and I’m in CA, meaning I get 2 or 3 more choices than residents of most other states. My guess is that this falls under one of the items we can’t opt-out of, like: “For our affiliates’ everyday business purposes - information about your transactions and experiences”. Those choices can only prevent affiliates and nonaffiliates from marketing to you.
2 Likes
Is anyone aware of any services that would allow me to update all three reports constantly or at least once/day? I found Wallethub, but they only pull TU reports and they don’t seem to have reviews on any sites I trust which makes me a bit nervous.
The ideal option would be one with a free trial, but I’m willing to pay since I’m really only interested in it for the next two weeks or so, so the cost would be relatively small.
I’m pretty sure the answer is no, as far as getting all three reports and/or scores on demand with that kind of frequency.
You might want to look at FreeCreditScore.com at Experian’s premium services. There is a 30 day trial available and I think it gives you on demand access to Experian. Might there be similar services with TU and Equifax?
If you care to share your more detailed requirements, there might be another solution other than monitoring it yourself. Some of the alerting services do a pretty good job at reporting inquiries, account opens/close, etc. But none to my knowledge are as timely about it as you state.
I signed up for the following (I’m not advocating for paying for any of these as a matter of course, and I would actually advocate against it unless you have a specific reason, due to the free alternatives available, but thought I should share what I found):
Experian Identity Works Premium - free 30 day trial, one Experian report per day, one of eq and tu every 90 days
Transunion Plus - $1 7 day trial, one TU report per day, unclear on other reports, but it scares me enough that I’ll be charged if I request the others, that I’m not going to try
Equifax Complete Premier Plan - free 7 day trial, one eq report per day, one of ex and tu (I think every year, though there are conflicting statements)
Overall, it has been very difficult to research all the options even though there’s only 3 companies. Either these companies are horrendous at marketing and service offerings, or they’re intentionally making things confusing. There were service offerings that seemingly had the same benefits, some for the same prices, some for different prices, all differently named.
As an aside, and far from a scientific study, of several banks that have made updates to my credit reports (regular account balance updates), ex has been the fastest to post, then eq, then tu.
2 Likes
Added Wallethub for free daily TU report.
Added Equifax free lock/unlock service.
Added Experian to providers offering free lock/unlock service, but need the link.
3 Likes
Thanks for the update.
I logged in and tried it uses Vantage 3.0 as you specified.
2 Likes
Outside of maybe managing your credit freezes, I don’t see what this new service offers that CK does not.
Just curious to hear the reasoning here. Is it really worth the effort to freeze and unfreeze your accounts? Credit fraud is covered by your credit card company. If you apply for several cards annually it seems to me like a lot more effort to protect against fraud, unless you are specifically applying for a card that you want to pull from a specific bureau to manage pulls? Or is it mainly to prevent someone opening a credit card falsely in your name?
As an aside: I had my first case of identity theft in my life earlier this year and it was a pain to fix. Cell phone/internet company I’ve never used across the country to an address in Georgia. Had to file a police report, submit utility docs, but that wouldn’t have been prevented by a credit freeze. I was freaking out when their dispute/fraud process took so long that it ended up showing on my reports as a collection “in dispute” but didn’t negate my score at all like I thought it would. After resolution the mark was removed, again to no affect to my score.
I assume any fraudulent credit card opened would be a similar case. A bit of inconvenience upfront to freeze/unfreeze compared to potentially avoid a several hour hassle later. Still, for me, I have more important things to do than worry about potential fraud and constantly having to freeze/unfreeze my accounts when I apply for my next card, especially if I have to put a lot of time or money into it. Maybe I don’t take security seriously enough.
Pretty much. IMO it’s worth the effort for victims of ID theft, because their info is definitely compromised, so this is the only way to stop it from being used to obtain credit. On the other hand I don’t know the statistics about repeated theft of the same ID, so I could be wrong.
Are you sure? Are you saying there was no credit pull to open that phone/internet company account? In my experience, utilities and ISPs require either a SSN to pull the credit report and extend credit to the new customer OR a security deposit to cover a bill or two. I’d think the only reason anyone would use another ID would be to get free service for a few months, and a deposit would negate this.
2 Likes
I actually didn’t think to check. Maybe there was and I didn’t notice. It was from just over 2 years ago so should have fallen off by now.
Another useful thread buried in a virtual haystack. I just activated CreditWise and it found a few of my passwords were leaked on the dark web. Not what I hoped to see but it’s more than I got from other credit monitoring services. I also like the simplicity of the user interface. But the credit report doesn’t show partial account numbers so it’s hard to know for example, which one of my three Chase cards it is referring to.
You can look at the credit limit and the account age to figure out which card it is referring to. Of course that only works if your limits are not the same or you know when you opened your cards (no solution for cards opened at the same time and with the same limits).
2 Likes
Had a look and liked what I saw. So decided to sign up. After all, it is free!
But maybe not for me . . . .
Seems they demand you have cell phone service in order to sign you up. That is a service I do not have and they offer no options. So no soup for me. Oh, well.
Did try to contact them. Unable to locate a way.
1 Like