An article relating to this blog post on Finextra:
Experian introduces business credit monitoring system
Experian, a global information services company, today announced the launch of Account Monitoring Service, its comprehensive business credit monitoring system that provides relevant and actionable ale...
See article
I can only hope that a company which profits by selling data about consumers might have at least a thought for those consumers.
Identity theft is a growing problem and these 'information' companies are a party to ID theft when a fraudster gets credit in another person's name as a result of a credit reference provider giving the real person a good credit reference. I've spoken before
about how it is essentially your data that they are selling, and the retailer or credit provider would never give credit to a fraudster posing as you, without your good credit reference from such information providers.
Where are the ethics here? This new product enhancement cost a lot more to implement than it would to protect consumers from fraud.
Consumers could easily be notified when any third party references that consumer's credit file, and for only cents. I also think that charging consumers excessive fees to do so is immoral.
Experian has the opportunity to show corporate leadership here so why don't they take the lead and show some social responsibility?
I believe that the only other realistic alternative is for governments to legislate hold those in the chain of identity theft liable for consumer's losses in cases which could otherwise not succeed without those companies providing the essential information
needed to carry out ID fraud.
What do you think?