I'm against it too. The company that I applied at told me exactly what they wanted to do and why and had me sign a form that I agreeded to the credit check in the first place. In this instance I did sign the forms after speaking with the owner of the company who expalined his position on the matter. Plus he actually asked. But having people check it without asking is BS and I'd like to know if it is legal or not.
Here is a breakdown of the conversation with another company regarding the same topic that I recently had: company: We need your SSN. Greg: Why? I haven't accepted a position and therefore I have no tax records that need to be filled out. company: oh, we use that to ensure that a name does is not entered in the database multiple times. Greg: Then use the primary key in the table containing the names as the key to search for. company: What? Greg: You see.. when you create an entry in a database table..... <blah> long time </blah> company: We can't do it that way. We need your SSN. Greg: No. You have my address, use that. No other "Greg Browns" reside there. company: It's a requirement. We need your SSN. What if we need to contact you in the future and you have moved? Greg: Well, if you need to contact me you're not going to send a letter to my SSN. Can I have a copy of your company handbook detailing the HR policies that state this requirement for pre-employment and exactly what that data is used for? company: Why? Greg: I want to show it to my attorney. company: I have another call I have to take, we'll get back with you. And I never heard back from them again. In the UK (and EU I think) this kind of thing is called Personally Identifiable Information, aka PII, and you CANNOT collect it. It's the law and it is fairly clear. I wish we would adopt the same law here. Greg -----Original Message----- From: Turnpike Man <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Nov 24, 2004 3:10 PM To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] SSN for applying to jobs -OT about credit- I'm no expert here folks, but learn about credit. For example, if you are mortgage shopping from multiple brokers to find the best deal and applying for preapprovals, etc., that's just another way lots of credit checks can show up on your credit report in a very small amount of time. However, you need to know that b/c all those checks were of the same type and squeezed into that small amount of time, it doesn't dbl, triple, quadruple the credit points against you. Some would even say it's looked at as one instance. Call your credit experts for more details. Again, I am NOT a credit expert!! Now as far as them doing it without permission? If that is legal, I'm against it. later, David --- Michael Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Thats scary, I never realized it was legal to run someone's credit > without permission... WTF? > > - --mike > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > | That's probably exactly what they are doing: running a pre-screening > credit check. Go ahead and ask them outright. They should have to ask > for premission. It ticks me off too because having too many credit > checks in a short time period can actually lower your credit score but a > little bit. If I apply to two dozen shops in a week I don't want 24 > checks in that same time period. > | > | Ugh. > | > | Greg > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) > > iD8DBQFBpOdPuxlRkoWKZoMRAlFpAJ9GpXep3lbYyrs0sPzuK+lvz9sFcQCgg/ct > gegZzTqynljlEPY6AQrNxfU= > =WNZk > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > -- > TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug > TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ > TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ > TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
