Experian's Tech Chief Defends Credit Scores: 'We're Not Palantir' (theverge.com) 55
When asked directly whether people actually like Experian, Alex Lintner, the credit bureau's CEO of Software and Technology, offered an unusual defense in an interview: "First of all, we're not Palantir, so we don't do reputation scores." Speaking on The Verge's podcast, Lintner conceded that consumers who have poor credit scores through "life's circumstances" sometimes direct their frustration at Experian, though he argued the company enables vital access to credit for 247 million Americans.
The 10-year company veteran said Experian has built its own large language model and about 200 AI agents for internal use, but consumer data remains entirely walled off from public AI systems. On security, Lintner said Experian hasn't experienced a data breach in a decade -- the last occurred two weeks into his tenure. When competitor Equifax suffered its massive breach, Equifax actually paid Experian to help protect affected consumers' identities.
The 10-year company veteran said Experian has built its own large language model and about 200 AI agents for internal use, but consumer data remains entirely walled off from public AI systems. On security, Lintner said Experian hasn't experienced a data breach in a decade -- the last occurred two weeks into his tenure. When competitor Equifax suffered its massive breach, Equifax actually paid Experian to help protect affected consumers' identities.
We're absolutely not Palantir (Score:3)
Balanced regulation??? (Score:2)
Somehow one of Eperien's competitors, Equifax, "lost" the credit reports of 160 million Americans to hackers, paid a 'cost of doing business' fine + free credit monitoring and remains to this day in business. Equifax somehow is now worth 25 billion on the stock market - https://www.nyse.com/quote/XNY... [nyse.com]
So not really believing what the credit reporting agency (for profit companies) have to say.
Equifax data breach https://archive.epic.org/priva... [epic.org]
Successive government regulators only seek a large monetary f
act your credit rating, not your shoe width (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, "credit" and "reputation" are synonyms.
I froze my credit some time ago, which required me registering with Experian. They still send me emails when my credit goes up and back down. Or down and back up. I phrase it thusly because it never does one without doing the other a couple days later. Great service I didn't ask for, guys.
I mean, credit rating agencies are fine, I guess. I just don't think that, if you volunteer to make a business out of rating people according to their trustworthiness, and you accomplish that rating by getting their creditors to send you all their personal private business every time they buy gas or eat dinner, you should expect not to be kind of disliked. Because that's not a thing that likable people do!
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I agree. They should just own the fact that they 1) provide a valuable service in measuring people's credit scores and 2) they won't be liked for it. Especially by those who have bad credit scores.
If there are legitimate issues where people should actually have higher credit scores than they do, then that should be investigated and resolved. If people are just upset that they screwed up their credit scores and don't like the repercussions? I'm not sure there's much that can be done.
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Re:act your credit rating, not your shoe width (Score:4, Insightful)
because you don't understand what a credit score is.
It isn't an evaluation of your balance sheet and ability to pay, it is about how likely you are to pay. That logically must include your historic behaviors and other factors like how long you have lived in a current place etc.
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because you don't understand what a credit score is.
It isn't an evaluation of your balance sheet and ability to pay, it is about how likely you are to pay. That logically must include your historic behaviors and other factors like how long you have lived in a current place etc.
When society happily approves the 18-year old shit-credit teenager to after-finance a pizza order along with a $50,000 car loan at 18% interest, I'm not sure even Experian understands what a credit score is for anymore. Or more importantly when they should have been saying FUCK NO with regards to extending credit.
All they care about is working with banks to make a metric fuckton of money off interest. I find them no less culpable than the ratings agencies on Wall Street in 2008. Forget 18-year old spendi
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Are you sure? I am hearing of people getting 5+ year loans on $50,000+ vehicles with barely $1000 down. Like the lenders know there's going to be a repo and don't care - there's profit to be made there too
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Take your fictional example of a teenager paying 18% interest on a $50,000 auto loan. The bank is assuming something less than 18% of such loans will go bad. The job of the bank is not to prevent somebody from digging a hole for themselves. That's the job of the borrower. The bank's job is to remain profitable across their portfolio of loans.
The bank is not your advisor, your conscience, or your life coach... they are your lender. Projecting other responsibility on them is silly.
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My perception is that it has to do with how much they think you might pay.
My credit score went up enormously when I got my first sad little credit card with a huge interest rate and a small limit, and kept it paid off. It stayed about the same when a year and change later I requested and received an increase in limit (asked for 2k, got 5) and a substantial rate decrease to about the average. Then it went down when I paid off a dental loan timely and it produced no interest... At least credit card use produc
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Banks do have separate internal only scores rating how profitable you are, but these are not the same things as credit scores. And there isn't just one profitable customer score, each bank has their own. This is part of how Capital One got big. They were pioneers with applying data science here to identify reliable borrowers who would consistently revolve large balances on credit cards without ever defaulting.
The reason your credit score would go down when you requested a credit limit increase would have be
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The reason your credit score would go down when you requested a credit limit increase would have been from the extra inquiry, which temporarily dings your score.
I paid the dental loan off over the course of a full year as that was the interest-free term, and my score didn't go down until I paid off the loan. It also never went up because of it. The fact that it wasn't profitable is still a better explanation, because otherwise my score should have increase when I got it.
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That's probably why. If they reported the payment at all it might just be reported as a single "paid" entry. 12 expected monthly payments reported as on time carries far more wait than one "paid" blip.
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I would have expected it to have a slight positive or no effect, not a negative one. My scores have since recovered, but my credit age is poor, so I will be waiting for that to improve. That would be reasonable if nobody were allowed to use it for anything but credit.
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Are you sure the dental loan company reported your ongoing performance? Not all companies do. They might check your credit with a hard hit, causing it to drop, then not update it with "Paid as agreed" ongoing. Not the credit companies fault but the lenders.
You would see it as a revolving account or similar on your credit report along with a performance summary.
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I just checked Experian. They gave the correct start and end dates, reported all of the payments, and the status is closed/never late. It's been about half a year since it was reported closed and only now has my score recovered. My TU score is a bit above my Experian, both are good but not very good where I need them to be so I can buy something so I'm not fucking around with rent and landlords.
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No, you should not. You don't start out "perfect". You start out "unknown" or "neutral". Why would it be perfect? If it's in the mid-600s I would think from a risk perspective that's probably accurate. Start at the median and prove your way out.
Somebody has to lend you money. If you were writing the cheque, would a complete stranger have your trust?
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Not spending yourself into negative balance is not the same thing as being competent at handling debt. It's a credit history, after all. Not going negative is not handling credit.
Besides, there are plenty of credit sources that will lend to people with no history, and you will pay less than people with bad history. But you should not start on an equal footing as those who have established a track record of competent credit management.
You know as slogans go (Score:2)
Re: You know as slogans go (Score:1)
Shooting the messenger (Score:5, Informative)
Lintner conceded that consumers who have poor credit scores through "life's circumstances" sometimes direct their frustration at Experian
People who have poor credit scores through "life's circumstances" probably *are* more likely to be unable to make required payments on time. Experian didn't cause this, and their scores didn't cause this. Their scores simply help lenders evaluate how likely it is that a person will default.
Maybe it doesn't feel fair for someone's credit score to take a hit because they get hit with a big, unexpected expense. The thing is, life did that to them, not Experian or its scores.
However, *most* people with low credit scores, actually *do* have problems managing their money. I see this in my own two sons, one of whom manages his money very well, the other does not.
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People who have poor credit scores through "life's circumstances"
What if my "life's circumstances" are all my personal info got stolen from Experian and then thoroughly trashed my credit?
Experian is one messenger that should be shot for criminal negligence.
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I would say that the thief is the perpetrator, not Experian. If Experian was negligent, then they would indeed share in the blame. Negligence is not being alleged in this article.
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If Experian was negligent, then they would indeed share in the blame.
Experian is synonymous with negligence.
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I would say that the thief is the perpetrator, not Experian.
If it were a single mistake, maybe but it happens so often that it is a pattern of behavior.
Negligence is not being alleged in this article.
Of course not, that would make Experian look bad.
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So, you cite a bunch of stores about criminals stealing from Experian, as evidence of negligence. That's kind of like citing news stories about bank robberies, as evidence of bank negligence. In those breaches, Experian was the victim, not the perpetrator.
You also cited a couple of stories about Experian selling data in ways people would find distasteful. That's more credible, but doesn't the source of people's credit scores taking a hit, so IMO off topic.
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So, you cite a bunch of stores about criminals stealing from Experian, as evidence of negligence.
You should read them.
"Experian — one of the three national U.S. credit bureaus — reportedly sold SSNs through its subsidiary, Court Ventures, to the operators of SuperGet.info who then offered all of the information online for a price. The website would advertise having '99% to 100% of all USA' in their database on websites frequented by carders. Hieu Minh Ngo, the website owner, was recently been indicted for 15-counts filed under seal in November 2012, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, substantive wire fraud, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, substantive identity fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, and substantive access device fraud."
If you don't think that's negligent then you're a fucking idiot.
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Yeah, I read that. Notice, in your own quote, that the owner of the company was charged with fraud. That wasn't fraud committed by Experian, but by another company that had apparently promised to keep the data safe, but instead sold it. Again, you are assigning blame to Experian, for the crimes of people who are not Experian.
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Like he said, you're a fucking idiot. The website was openly advertising crimes and they did no due diligence.
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they did no due diligence
That is an accusation for which you have no evidence.
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There is but regardless, you have supplied plenty of evidence that you are fucking idiot.
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I don't believe you, because if "plenty of evidence" did exist, you would have gleefully provided links and shoved them down my throat. No, you're just making it up.
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The problem is I already have. You can bring a horse to water... but if it's fucking idiot then it'll just die of thirst claiming there is no water.
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No, what you *already* showed evidence for, was that criminals stole from Experian. You did not show evidence of negligence on the part of Experian, or lack of due dilligence.
Here's the thing you young folks tend not to realize (or maybe older folks tend to forget): SSNs were not considered "highly protected" until quite recently. They were always thought of as just an identifier. It used to be common for many types of businesses, like car insurance companies or even some stores, to ask for your SSN. Nobody
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You did not show evidence of negligence on the part of Experian, or lack of due dilligence.
"You can bring a horse to water... but if it's fucking idiot then it'll just die of thirst claiming there is no water."
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Yeah I know. There are those of you who think that every breach is preventable and that the companies that got breached should be punished. There are those of you who think that every business deal that turns out to be a bad deal, could have been foreseen if proper due diligence was followed. Maybe one day you'll actually be in a position to be in the wrong end of such a deal, and you'll find out that it's a lot harder than it looks. But I doubt that will happen, because naive people with your perspective,
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There are those of you who think that every breach is preventable and that the companies that got breached should be punished.
Not exactly. I'm of the mind that if you willfully retain information on individuals then you should be legally responsible for properly controlling it. If you lose control of the information then you are liable. This is not a punishment it is a safeguard against chronic under-investment in security. If a company know that losing control of personal information they gathered could ruin them then one of three things will occur:
1. They will no longer retain more information then absolutely necessary.
2. They w
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Not exactly. I'm of the mind that if you willfully retain information on individuals then you should be legally responsible for properly controlling it. If you lose control of the information then you are liable
The issue is, you are using the perspective of the year 2025 and applying it to events that happened before 2010. There was no widespread understanding in those days, of the need to take special precautions with people's personal information in a database, or even when sharing it with "business associates." Those ideas of strict security procedures and safeguards were largely developed since that time, in response to incidents like the breaches that happened to Experian. It's not fair to apply today's stand
Credit scores are a good thing (Score:3)
Of course bad credit risks get mad at the credit rating agencies for telling lenders that.
It's because of these agencies that lenders have access to the information to make lending decisions, and good credit risks can get loans with favorable terms.
remember... (Score:3)
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Yes, and it was highly local and often limited.
Your grocer might extend you a tab, but only because they see you come in buying groceries every Monday for a while that they know what you want. Eventually they'll trust you enough to extend you credit. But this only worked when your circle of commerce was the town and you knew the store owner's name. The whole "small town" thing and "everyone knows
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It should be illegal to base literally anything other than offering credit on a credit score. Without that, the very existence of credit scores is abhorrent and no one intelligent would defend them.
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credit existed before credit scores did, and could easily exist without credit scores and credit score companies
And credit scores are almost entirely a US phenomena. Most countries don't use them as laws (and common sense) tell lenders to evaluate things for themselves. Risks and liabilities are evaluated by a lender on a per application basis.
Experian still tries to "sell" their credit scores but the lenders aren't buying.
I find the entire idea of a single company able to determine if you're good or bad and if someone should do business with you to be rather Orwellian... kind of what China does with Social Cre
Sorry, no. (Score:2)
Sorry, no amount of worthwhile value for credit reports justifies what Experian has done and still does. The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] is full of their breaches and shenanigans. They have an ongoing pattern of sloppiness. Until they (along with the other reporting services) were forced to stop by legislattion, they charged us for credit reports based on our own data that they had hoovered up.
Credit scores are... (Score:2)
...an imperfect measure
Yeah, they are kinda close to accurate, but in some unusual cases totally miss the mark
Financial institutions that rely solely on credit scores get a distorted picture
Of the big three (Score:2)
Experian has been, in my experience, the absolute worst of the bunch. Without going into details, they royally screwed up my account (not the credit part, thankfully), and it took a half dozen contacts with them to straighten it out. If I didn't have to deal with them for credit locking, etc, I would have fired them years ago. We're all stuck with these miserable vampires that do the consumer no favors - they ultimately work for the banks, after all.
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I'm curious how you managed to speak to someone at Experian. I have, probably a similar issue to yours, account-related but nothing to do with the actual items on the credit report.
I tried a half-dozen times in 2024 and again a few months ago to get in touch with them: phone, email, and physical letter with a stamp - so far, no response other than empty words from robots.
Someone else here advised me to contact a lawyer, and I've thought about shopping around for creditors that don't use Experian. But these
"You ever known a siren to be good?" (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Lot of vitriol here. But like it or not until a better solution arises we're stuck with the credit agencies.
Yes, they have questionable histories. Yes, the picture they paint is imperfect. Yes, identity theft is easy to do and far too hard to unwind. But we need something.
Without some method of behavioral tracking almost all forms of unsecured credit are untenable. If people could walk out of one credit abandonment and into another credit product without carrying the failure
All is not so well (Score:1)
"On security, Lintner said Experian hasn't experienced a data breach in a decade -- the last occurred two weeks into his tenure."
Maybe, maybe not.
Experian did disclose a data breach in August 2020 that happened is South Africa.
Experian were recently fined €2.7M for violation of the GDPR in The Netherlands (see https://www.autoriteitpersoons... [autoriteit...egevens.nl], in Dutch).
In reaction, Experian decided to close its business in The Netherlands (see https://nos.nl/artikel/2586754... [nos.nl], also in Dutch).