basics This Could Happen to You!
Imagine that you narrative to work one day. This day is like any other day, except today you have received an email request you to narrative to human resources. You're a stellar employee, have never been reprimanded, your enterprise is growing, and not looking to downsize. Upon reporting you are quickly escorted to a seminar room where termination papers are neatly staked with your name typed on them.
This Could Happen to You!
Does this sound like a fictional story, Un-American or so far fetched it couldn't perhaps be accurate? Think again!
Numerous workers in the United States have been snared in a web of inaccurate data. This well accessible data could not only cost them their jobs, but haunts them and prevents them from obtaining new employment, essentially causing financial ruin.
Every year millions of records are created in the United States. Mortgages, deeds, court records and many more documents are collective data and well obtainable. Anyone requesting a file can view it., and they do. Each enterprise day, armed with laptops in hand, abstractors comb through this collective data copying it onto their computer to create a database of information. As this data is transcribed human errors corollary in incomplete information, erroneous data and typos.
The abstractor makes their money by selling this data to a data aggregator. A data aggregator in turn uses the data to create a centralized repository of millions of people in the United States. Each day as we live out our lives we create crumbs of information. These crumbs of data form an endless contribute of data which are insignificant when separated, however, become much more vital as they are pulled together.
How often have you completed things like surveys, contests and warranty cards? perhaps you have a telephone in your home, use water and electricity or/and have signed up for frequent flyer programs. None of this well matters, as the data comes from a plethora of sources. We all shed bits of data about ourselves as is seems harmless. The danger in small bits of data is created when the data is pulled together. As data is compiled in the aggregator's law the task of attempting to interrelate the data begins. The effort to create faultless profiles of people results in data that is often inaccurate. This is a corollary of records belonging to complicated people having been combined into one narrative or data that is old and should have been deleted, but continues to be reported.
Why would someone go through the trouble of collecting all of this information? Once the pieces if data are compiled, it is worth tens of millions of dollars. This data is then used to create reports that are highly specialized and consist of far more data than what would be contained in your reputation report. These specialized reports show: lawsuits that you have been complex in; criminal convictions; Dui's; other arrests; unpaid liens and more. This information, besides being sold to corporate clients, can also be resold to other aggregators.
Here is a minute sample of the types of issues inaccurate data results in:
A misdemeanor reported as a felony. An upstanding people with no criminal history reported as having a series of criminal convictions.
One Texas man with no criminal narrative reported as:
A female prostitute. Wanted in connection for manslaughter. A dealer of stolen goods. A registered sex offender. Wanted in connection with a 6 state crime spree.
At a major drug enterprise hundreds of vendors and workers were dismissed without warning when negative results were reported in an aggregator's system. This data does not come from a reputation file, the victims have no opportunity to defend themselves or clear their good names. One employee was dismissed for a misdemeanor that had been expunged for some years from court records. However, since data aggregators are unregulated they keep data in their law for as long as they want to narrative it.
A large ration of data is not being obtained directly from the source. Therefore, the data is simply inaccurate and yet is passed from the aggregator knowing that associates are going to use this data to make decisions. Beyond the issue of employment, data aggregator data is used for:
Credit decisions Insurance Law enforcement Megan's Law reporting
This question will only get worse, as there is so much data and uses for the data exist throughout all sectors of business. What is even more troubling is that the data aggregators sell data to one another. This process supplementary contaminates the reputations of innocent people among complicated data systems.
Unlike a credit-reporting group there are no clear-cut policies or procedures to clear up false, inaccurate and slanderous data contained in an aggregators report. It can take years and tens of thousands of dollars to decide issues from an aggregator. Even after you clear up the issue with one aggregator the question can resurface with an additional one aggregator since the data had been sold prior to the clean up and is therefore active in someone else's system.
The whole of errors contained in reputation reports is estimated to be around 79 percent. Although high, this data is far more definite since it is transmitted directly from the narrative owner to the reputation group normally electronically. When data passes through the aggregator it has been scraped, manipulated, sold and resold through complicated hands before being placed in the informational database. If reputation data has a high error rate when it has been compiled and passed electronically, can you imagine what the error rate is when it is manually abstracted and passed around?
With a reputation reporting group under the Fair reputation Reporting Act, you have the right to view your reputation narrative and a process by which to make corrections. However, when the data is arrival from an aggregator, they have no obligation to disclose anything. The data aggregator's are a back office law used by corporations so they remain in a position where they are underground and rarely disclosed as the source of negative information. Data aggregator's are quick to point out they contribute data, "for informational purposes only." However, they are aware that the data provided is being used as factual information.
We have all worked with computers for so long that we have developed a mindset that if something comes from my computer it must be accurate. The unfortunate outcome of the data aggregator is that if you're damaged by faulty data it is going to be a long and intensive task of getting back on track. While you effort to decide the faulty data issues you may be denied jobs and housing. Considering the whole of inaccurate data that exists and how more is added each day, losing a job for a criminal conviction, not being able to acquire credit, housing or being arrested for a crime you never committed is a scenario that is not out of the realm of possibility. It could happen to you.
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