Debt Collectors Can Now Text, Email and DM You On Social Media (npr.org) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: New rules approved by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that took effect on Tuesday dictate how collection agencies can email and text people as well as message them on social media to seek repayment for unpaid debts. Kathleen L. Kraninger, the former CFPB director who oversaw the rule changes, said last year that they were a necessary update to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which is more than four decades old. "We are finally leaving 1977 behind and developing a debt collection system that works for consumers and industry in the modern world," Kraninger said in a blog post.
Under the new rules, debt collectors who contact you on social media have to identify themselves as debt collectors but can attempt to join your network by sending you a friend request. Collectors must give you the option to opt out of being contacted online, and any messages they send have to be private -- collectors can't post on your page if it can be seen by your contacts or the public. Collection agencies can also email and text message debtors, but must still offer the ability to opt out. Industry officials praised the move as a welcome change to the outdated methods currently used by the collections industry. The new rules were devised during the Trump administration, when the bureau became more business-friendly than it had been in the past. The new rules also set a limit for the first time on how often debt collectors can call you. Agencies will be restricted to seven calls per week per account in collection.
Under the new rules, debt collectors who contact you on social media have to identify themselves as debt collectors but can attempt to join your network by sending you a friend request. Collectors must give you the option to opt out of being contacted online, and any messages they send have to be private -- collectors can't post on your page if it can be seen by your contacts or the public. Collection agencies can also email and text message debtors, but must still offer the ability to opt out. Industry officials praised the move as a welcome change to the outdated methods currently used by the collections industry. The new rules were devised during the Trump administration, when the bureau became more business-friendly than it had been in the past. The new rules also set a limit for the first time on how often debt collectors can call you. Agencies will be restricted to seven calls per week per account in collection.
And can now directly send back a photo of (Score:2, Funny)
my ass spread open.
Follow the money in the WORST way (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, you're going for Funny, but if it's a personally recognizable image, perhaps by a scar or birthmark, then they would surely turn around and try to blackmail you with it. Always comes down to "follow the money", which is kind of a sick joke in this case.
At this point my primary email is so flooded with Facebook-linked spam that I'm mostly ignoring it, so the tactic would avail naught (if I had any debt). And how the heck can Facebook profit from sending 300 spams/day to some unknown, but possibly large
Re:Follow the money in the WORST way (Score:5, Insightful)
Google goes in to debt collection
With everything Google knows about most people they can be very selective about which debt they buy and have high success rates on collecting.
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Modify parent funny in the worst way. So funny it isn't even funny. And yes, I shouldn't have missed that angle.
Mr? I can't even get the obvious jokes right. Always missing the low-hanging fruit. I should have said something about "revenge porn spam" or "revenge spam porn" with regards to my little Facebook problem.
One more thing (but no worries for the ghost of Jobs). It's the BIG money to follow. Can the EVIL google position itself to collect the debt when the federal government goes bust? Talk about prof
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> First, debt collectors don't buy debt. They are criminal organizations. They don't buy anything.
> They go and find identities previously stolen and dumped online, then make up fake debt bills that never existed, and try to extort money from those stolen identities.
Whilst I'm sure there are unscrupulous people doing scams like that, what you're describing are scammers, not debt collectors. Debt collectors absolutely do buy debt as GP described.
Given you have a weird and incorrect view of what debt co
I'm already of Fetlife (Score:2)
exposed balls deep, not too worried.
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Actually I recall reading a joke one time about using anus images for login credentials. The unique wrinkles? Or perhaps the subcutaneous veins? So make sure it's a low-rez pic?
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Yeah, you're going for Funny, but if it's a personally recognizable image, perhaps by a scar or birthmark, then they would surely turn around and try to blackmail you with it.
LOL, if I'm sending a pic of my butthole to someone, that automatically means I don't care who sees it. Send it to everyone in the world, I don't care.
"I'll send this to your mom!" (She's dead, but since she gave birth to me I suspect she's already seen it.)
"I'll send this to your wife/girlfriend!" (She's seen it too.)
"I'll send this to your boss!" (Oh please do, and thank you!)
"I'll send this to $OTHER_PEOPLE!" (See above)
In short, if you think I'd be embarrassed by someone seeing my butthole, you really d
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Great. Cross ONE personal vulnerability off your list. But you have others.
However, I actually think there is too much focus on the sticks such as blackmail. In terms of manipulating people and limiting their freedom, I think the carrots don't get enough credit. It's actually easier to manipulate people if you can get them to enthusiastically support the manipulations, and the root of their enthusiasm is what they like and even their personal virtues and strengths.
Now in the context of this story I'm wonder
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Great. Cross ONE personal vulnerability off your list. But you have others.
So does everyone; what's your point? We were discussing sending pics of my butthole, and I said, "feel free". (What a time to be alive!)
So what positive inducements can the debt collector offer each debtor to motivate paying up?
I can't think of any, to be frank. Crypto wouldn't do it for me, but then I'm not in debt. I would say "instilling a sense of personal responsibility", but then I said that out loud and I started laughing.
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Well, now you seem to be asking for a high-level motivation, and that one is actually easy to address, though you've also answered about as well as I can. EVERYONE has some buttons to push, so with sufficient personal information about any specific person, the appropriate buttons can be pushed. Some combination of carrots and sticks will work on anyone. (But don't say that to a Libertarian fanatic and follower of Nietzsche?)
Maybe the significant part is that the sticks cause more complaints about manipulati
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Yep, I loved Snow Crash and I reread it every so often, along with The Diamond Age as well.
If you like historical interplay, check out Connections by James Burke, if you haven't already.
It's a fantastic trip through the universe of how various things came to be. Basically, just about everything depends on someone else doing something else, often with completely unexpected results or weird side trips that end up producing something amazing and/or unexpected.
The book actually has a mapping of sorts that lets
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Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately none of the local libraries still have a copy in English. (Lots of fiction from a James Lee Burke, however.)
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I'd send you an epub copy but you could probably find it somewhere on the web with only a tiny bit of searching. :)
It's definitely not at this url, that's for certain: pirate-bays.net/search?q=the+diamond+age
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I'm sort of tempted on your description (especially if the book is out of print), but I already have a bunch of ebooks queued up. (Mostly 19th century stuff from Gutenberg.) Really hard for me to read books that way. My theory is that I have too much mental hardware keyed to the physical feel of dead trees.
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No harm in storing it away for a rainy day. :)
I have a bunch of movies on my tablet specifically for times when our power goes out and/or the interweb is down. Got a bunch or ebooks there as well for variety.
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But that does remind me of Stephenson's trilogy of historical fiction around Newton. You didn't mention it, but I'd wager you've read it.
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So you're goatse? I thought that was you
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my ass spread open.
Could. Your other social media contacts will also see that.
Imagine your mother going to facebook and seeing that.
Gee, his diaper rash hasn't gotten much better after all of these years.
Pointless (Score:1)
This is just going to be ignored the same way.
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I think this is more for the times when the phone number/address they have is outdated and your relatives won't give them the new one. If they can track down your social media, they can send you a message and get to the "in contact" stage, instead of being stuck in the "searching" stage.
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so people with the same name can be harassed by debt collectors who will refuse to believe your not who they think you are, just like they now won't believe that they have the wrong phone number when the old cell number is reassigned.
Re: Pointless (Score:1)
Well, thatâ(TM)s illegal, even over the phone. If they keep harassing you, then sue them. It works surprisingly well to threaten them and if they ignore you bring them to small claims, judges absolutely hate debt collectors.
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No, because they are properly regulated and fined for bad behavior, but if it isn't enforced or amount to sufficient fines to operate the agency, it doesn't matter. Let's say you have 1 federal employee enforce all the regulation, that will cost you $1M/y between office space, building infrastructure, travel, court fees etc.
So any event would have to be serious enough to amount to AT LEAST $1M given the nature of lawsuits or sufficient collections of people to make $1M worth it. Now the federal agency that
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Good luck trying to figure out WHO to sue when the caller won't tell you who they are, who they represent, and the caller ID info is either "private" or faked. If you tell them you aren't the person they're calling for, they'll refuse to tell you anything more... but they'll still keep calling (presumably figuring that if they re-roll the dice often enough, they'll occasionally get lucky).
The ONLY thing that even SLIGHTLY works to get them to quit calling for a few weeks is to make sexually-lewd comments ab
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Yeah, not so much. If they're a debt collector, they need real contact information or else they can't collect from you.
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so people with the same name can be harassed by debt collectors who will refuse to believe your not who they think you are, just like they now won't believe that they have the wrong phone number when the old cell number is reassigned.
And it will happen https://www.creditinfocenter.c... [creditinfocenter.com]
I had a problem trying to get coaches for a youth hockey team. One guy I wanted said his name was too common, and one administrative cockup could ruin his life. So he issued a writ of "No thank you"
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If they are already sending you letters and leaving you voicemails, then you know you owe money. This is just going to be ignored the same way.
some debt collector kept sending letters and calling me for two years. then they sued to take it to court apparently hoping i would not respond (most people don't) and they could get a default judgment. but i did respond to the court and sent them a notarized copy of the response by certified mail with the notary witnessing the enclosure and mailing. in a couple weeks, they withdrew the case.
i never had an account with the claimed creditor. this was 18 years ago, so they can't contact me anymore, and hav
Jailbait debt (Score:3)
In many states it's illegal for a debt collector to contact you about a time-barred debt. So buying a debt that old would just be buying a problem, even if they thought it was a legitimate debt.
there's a precedent for that . . . (Score:3)
It's simple: every regulatory agency exists to protect the industry that it is supposed to regulate. Money greases the wheels and the industry has the money.
Is turnabout fair play? (Score:3)
So, we'll be able to contact them via social media and this will count the same as a phone call or sending a message through regular mail?
Wonder how many customers posting, "You still haven't sent me the information you're required to by law" requests they'll get before their name is banned.
And then in court the company will say, "This doesn't count as an official request. Oh, but here are the thirty eight times we contacted them. This count!"
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I get the feeling they are not going to very sociable. I doubt you'll be able to contact them if they didn't contact you first.
Let them try (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot! (Score:2)
They will do it via /.! :P
use the FBI's reasoning (Score:2)
It's not private communications, because it's on another entity's servers. They said going into gmail and yahoo mail was OK without a warrant because there was no reasonable expectation of privacy... I wonder if that logic would go anywhere in court?
Debt collectors... (Score:2)
...belong on social media. It's the perfect place for them. Please, debt collectors, go on social media & send threatening messages to anyone & everyone who your algorithms flag! [evil grin]
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It does sound dumb.
I'm a debt collector. Could we be friends on Facebook?
I guess the same people that buy extended car warranties would say yes.
Cut out the middleman (Score:3)
Go to the business you actually owe money to and negotiate a settlement based on:
- Whether it's bone fide lack of payment on your part or obvious abuse of impossible to cancel free trial type of situation
- How much they will realistically ever see from you given your financial circumstances, which got to be better than what they would get from the collector
- How screenshots and voice recording from the collector will look on their Yelp review to potential new customers
The one time we got into this was with bogus gym free trial situation. After discussion of the first and the last points, the gym has agreed to inform the collector of an error on their part and close the matter.
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This is exactly how debt consolidation companies work, and from what I've heard it does work in many circumstances.
How about be more careful who you loan money too. (Score:2)
While it is hard to be perfect, and even the best of people may make a mistake, and miss a payment. However the Bill you later, or put it on Credit concept has gotten too easy, and will accept nearly anyone. A popular Advertising campaign, BAD CREDIT NO PROBLEM!
Normally we adjust to people with bad credit by offering them a higher interest rates to help cover the risk. But that too increase the risk of non-payment, because you stress a poor person to pay more for something.
However while I wish poor people
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However while I wish poor people could get a loan to buy big things they need, however our system isn't setup to treat them fairly, and it would be better to reject someone for a loan because they will not be able to pay it.
What would fair treatment of loans for them even look like?
I'll note that we shouldn't lump "poor people" and deadbeats together as one group. I came from a poor family, yet we always paid our debts. Didn't have any problems getting loans as long as the payback was financially feasible.
But back to the original thought, if a person has bad credit, how do we process new loans for them?
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I do wish I could give you a good answer.
Any solution I come up with has an issue which could be harmful.
The best I can come up with is limiting what products and services one can take a loan out on.
A reliable car: Yes, a luxury car: No.
A basic Smart phone: yes, premium phone no.
Still this will be probmatic. As I remembered when I first got on the career ladder I was in consulting, where I needed a fancy car, and the high tech gizmo to help show that my brand was successful. So those loans helped me out.
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I do wish I could give you a good answer. Any solution I come up with has an issue which could be harmful.
The best I can come up with is limiting what products and services one can take a loan out on.
A reliable car: Yes, a luxury car: No. A basic Smart phone: yes, premium phone no.
Still this will be probmatic. As I remembered when I first got on the career ladder I was in consulting, where I needed a fancy car, and the high tech gizmo to help show that my brand was successful. So those loans helped me out.
Frustrating to the nth. And the people who need it least have the best options. Hard to tell the upright from the deadbeat. Or just those who can't handle money or credit. Credit cards can be a godsend or a horrible trap. If you use a card for everything, then pay it off completely every month, you have an itemized listing of everything. Have a cashback card, and you not only pay 0% interest, you get a 2% or whatever discount.
The other extreme is looking at the card like free money, and having your purchas
Ha ha ha ha, I dare them (Score:2)
Oh yeah, text me your bullshit and see what happens. :)
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Oh yeah, text me your bullshit and see what happens. :)
As long as he doesn't mail his shit to you.
Reminds me of how my father and the local sheriff were always playing pranks on each other, and one day a fresh bag of Elephant shit showed up on our front porch, courtesy of our Sheriff buddy.
Prank after prank. In some respects it wasn't fair, because as sheriff, he had much better access to gross stuff. But my old man was pretty creative too.
Who would actually accept the friend request? (Score:2)
And just like that... (Score:2)
...the CFPB has become just another Washington agency, serving the industry they allegedly regulate, setting their purported protected at the disadvantage, and be sure they will explain it. No explanation necessary Granny Warren, you succeeded.
Still no chain of custody rules (Score:2)
Take care of your bills. (Score:2)
Debt collectors don't come knocking if you're a month or two late. By the time they start contacting you, you either can't pay your bills due to lack of money, or you're someone just not paying your bills even though you have the money. If the former, file bankruptcy and get your life back in order, if the latter, then fuck you, you deserve to be in jail.
If those debts are student loans, then I feel for you. We need to get that mess fixed ASAP.
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Debt collectors don't come knocking if you're a month or two late. By the time they start contacting you, you either can't pay your bills due to lack of money, or you're someone just not paying your bills even though you have the money. If the former, file bankruptcy and get your life back in order, if the latter, then fuck you, you deserve to be in jail.
WTF? I've never had a debt sent to collections. If I've been late it was by mistake and I've paid when notified. However, I've been relentlessly harassed over debt by people with the same last name as me. People not even in my family. Getting them to stop was very hard. Most recently I started getting calls about debt created by someone who stayed at my ex-wife's house a decade after I moved out. These people are scum.
Once you've informed them you're not the person they hold debt for, they're required to stop contacting you. Anything after that is harassment, and you can get the courts to stop them contacting you.