Advanced Personal Finance

As if the three major credit bureaus didn’t already whore your information enough, there’s a new product called a ‘trigger lead.’ As this article at Bankrate.com explains, for about a year and a half, the big three (Experian, Equifax, Transunion) have been selling a product to lenders essentially tipping them off that you’re in the market for a loan and inviting them to bid on it.

Here’s how it works. You apply for a mortgage. The lender or broker pings your credit report. The credit bureaus take the fact that you’re applying for a mortgage and sell your name and phone number (and everything else they have on you) to competing lenders. You get inundated with calls pitching their loans. And it’s all perfectly legal.

This is pretty sleazy if you ask me. Then again, I think the bureaus and most of what they do are pretty sleazy. If you live in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island or Alabama, your state legislatures have bills before them to stop or limit the practice. Live in any of the other 44 states? Sorry - you’re fair game.

The industry response is predictable. “It promotes competition,” they say. Except that you didn’t invite the competition. Or you ruled out the competition for various reasons.

Not only are you being harassed now, I can easily see how this could be abused. The article mentions the possibility of ’social engineering’ an identity theft. I’d also say someone a little less savvy, perhaps, could be duped into taking a loan with a company or companies they didn’t intend to borrow from.

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