Here is a link to my other post where I expressed my thoughts much better, if you are interested you can take a look – https://lemmy.world/post/37101088
Here is a link to my other post where I expressed my thoughts much better, if you are interested you can take a look – https://lemmy.world/post/37101088
I find this kind of sentiment a bit funny, because we already have much worse
Credit scores are opaque ratings of people kept by private organisations used to refuse business to people effectively based on their spending & borrowing behaviour, many of these will now happily encourage you to link your accounts so they get itemised data from some people now too.
This could literally be happening today and they would just need to say “sorry your credit isn’t good enough”. Credit score factors into your ability to rent & buy accommodation in the UK already.
There’s no reason for these companies to switch to using a government ID for these kinds of decisions because that would have to be a more transparent process and less easily used to their benefit.
FWIW, I’m against mandatory ID even though we effectively already have it in the form of national insurance. IMO the ID being digital should be a non issue as long as it’s optional (there also needs to be a free physical version of any national identity for those without phones).
I support your opinion that something similar already exists, and I am also interested in why it is necessary to introduce a digital ID?
But you know, there was that old comedy where people handed over all their data and decision-making to an intelligent computer, and now we see AI, and eventually this nonsense is considered normal. See what I’m getting at?.. What seems crazy today may become normal after a while.
I don’t think it’s necessary, but I can see some of the reasons it might be introduced
Firstly digital IDs typically come with obvious convenience benefits for the user. E.g. apparently Gen Z doesn’t really carry wallets, so this means they have a way of getting ID that’s better for that way of doing things. They should also be harder to forge, so hopefully can help reduce fraud and identity theft.
I’d say from a government’s perspective, a digital ID program is cheaper to run and allows them to speed up access to some government services. I’d say most of the opportunities for abuse from the government come from when the ID becomes a mandatory thing, then you might get voter suppression and limitations of access to public services
Yeah like I don’t want a digital ID as in for the internet, but an RFID code i can keep on my phone or put on a dongle on my keys that serves as my driver’s license or passport would be nice.
It’s the idea that I have to tell the government that I’d like to attend this adult establishment that I’ve got a beef with. And I’m not as comfortable with ID checks at bars as most people are tbh
You’re gonna have to elaborate on that point. Do you think some products shouldn’t be age-restricted? Do you think it should just be honor-system? Are you simply a profoundly private person and resent that another human knows your name and age?
I’m not saying it should be done away with entirely, I’m saying I don’t quite like it.
It’s varying degrees of all of these things depending on the situation. Idgaf if 18 year olds want to drink and when I was in a country where I didn’t get carded buying beer it was kinda nice. Then there are environments like sex shops where I very much don’t want minors there, but at the same time anonymity or pseudonymity would be quite preferable to giving my government ID. And I’m seeing more and more places scan IDs rather than just look at them. And while today idgaf if the bartender or grocery clerk knows I drink, I’m not quite certain I’m comfortable with the government knowing it, and in some states I’d probably be uncomfortable with the government knowing such things about me.
The increases in age restrictions and need to present ID to do more and more is ceding the right to anonymity, pseudonymity, and to keep the government out of your affairs. It may or may not be worth it, but I keep seeing people acting like we aren’t giving these things up when we do this.
To some extent losing anonymity is the cost of living in a society. Owning property, the entire financial system, the entire legal system, huge portions of civizilation depend on reliable identification.
Scanning cards is fine with me as long as it’s just a validity check but I can’t say I trust Kroger to not build a database of spending habits, for example, so to some extent I share your discomfort. But I think it’s a small concern compared to the way we use cards to pay for everything now. Cash is the king of anonymous consumption.
You can have your assets frozen due to a bad credit score…?
Not in America and I highly doubt it for Britain. No idea what OP’s on about.
They are only opaque to the extent that reduces the ability to game them. It’s very common knowledge what the primary factors are that determine your credit score:
Without paying a cent of interest, my credit score is in the 800s, simply because I use my credit card for everyday purchases, then pay off the statement balance each month, and have done this consistently.
“Refuse business” is deceptively overbroad—no entity will prevent you from fully paying for something in cash based on your credit score, for example. But they may refuse to lend to you, if you have a history of failing to repay money that was lent to you in the past.
There’s nothing shady about that, it makes perfect sense for one to be less willing to lend money to someone who has a reputation of not repaying their debts.
Without a credit score or similar system, lenders either will:
Credit scores are purely beneficial to good/reliable borrowers—it seems that invariably, those who have the biggest problem with them are unreliable borrowers who really wish they could hide the fact that they don’t repay their debts from the next entity they intend to get more ‘free money’ from.
One caveat. You do get dinged on your credit score if you are too responsible with your credit. You get dinged if you don’t carry a balance on your credit card. Credit reports ultimately rate how profitable you are to lenders, not how responsible you are with credit.
Untrue. I’m in the 800s, and all I did was consistently pay off my everyday-use credit cards every month.
Absolutely false:
No they don’t, or else I, who has literally only profited off my credit cards via the combination of never paying interest, and utilizing cash back rewards from regular use, wouldn’t have a credit score in the 800s.
Explain my 800s score, then. They’re making literally negative profit from me.
If someone has one credit card that’s always maxed out, and while they’re always making payments on time, they’re minimum payments, so they’re accruing essentially the most interest they could possibly be accruing, I guarantee that person’s credit score is much worse than mine, even though there is no arguing that this hypothetical person generates way more revenue for the credit card provider. That refutes your assertion from the other direction.
And that’s without even mentioning how significant a negative influence 100% utilization has on the score.
No, you are incorrect.
This is a screenshot directly from a credit report disclosure from a current mortgage application. This type of credit report is much more accurate than the ones you get from a free site, as they are the version of the credit report actually used by a mortgage lender.
I do the same strategy you do. We don’t carry a balance on our cards. Usually the only debt we have is our mortgage. And yet, clear as day, the credit report disclosure clearly indicates that our score took a hit because we don’t carry a balance. I also have a plus 800 credit score, but it would be higher if I made a habit of paying the bank lots of interest income.
A bad credit score won’t prevent me from buying groceries.
Yes credit scores are bullshit and the capitalist drive to maximize profit returns that leads to the application of credit scores to all sorts of things is a problem, but you’re delusional if you think credit scores are WORSE than the potential to entirely freeze bank accounts due to political opinions.
I’m curious about this point because, and correct me if I’m wrong, the UK government can already freeze people’s assets via the police today, it doesn’t need a national ID scheme to do this.
Credit scores are used today to deny people access to housing and finance services predominantly, but can also block people from having mobile phones and even jobs.
And they’re opaque we have no real way of knowing what data is used to determine them and in what way. That might include what you tweet about for all we know
Given a lot of people out there need to be able to access finance in order to be able to handle unexpected emergency costs, a bad credit score very literally could cause someone to not be able to afford groceries. Average personal debt is rising faster than inflation across the western world, so this is an increasingly big problem.
It’s worse because it’s a real problem today, not a hypothetical future one.
Yes a bad credit score could stop you from having access to things in emergencies, yes it could stop you from having access to things that are important in life, but there are a lot of extra steps and special circumstances that have to occur before a bad credit score is directly responsible for your fridge being empty. Most of those conditions involve simply not having money to access in the first place, and very few of them are going to be as sudden and immediately effective as a freeze on your bank account.
Needing access to financial services to handle a possible emergency is all well and good, but lacking that support structure absolutely pales in comparison to simply being forbidden from conducting commerce of any kind. No emergency needed, savings are irrelevant, the only preparation that could help you is a mattress full of cash and that’s definitely neither a good solution nor a long lasting one. People live their lives every day with bad credit scores, it sucks but it’s doable. Freezing what assets they have would make an immediate and decidedly negative impact well beyond the inability to get a loan. Thinking that credit scores are worse because they’re not a hypothetical future problem is like saying a stubbed toe is worse than getting shot, because you haven’t gotten shot yet.
They’re not. They exist for a very good reason, and are purely beneficial to people who repay what they borrow. They only ‘hurt’ people who don’t repay their debts, but only insofar as it makes it more difficult for them to take more money from people that they then also won’t pay back.
They also hurt people who are the most responsible with their credit. They ding you on your score if you don’t carry a balance on your card.
This is unequivocally false. I can’t believe how pervasive this common misconception still is:
Carrying a balance on your card literally can only hurt you, as the only thing the actual dollar amount of the balance impacts is utilization, in other words, ‘what percent of your total credit limit are you using’, and for that, lower is better. Plus, carrying a balance means paying interest, which is money down the drain on top of that.
I haven’t paid a cent of interest on any of my credit cards for well over a decade; I use it for my everyday purchases, and pay it off every month—my credit score’s firmly in the 800s, and 750 is the ‘you won’t get a better rate’ threshold for 99.9% of lending.
That’s why my credit score went down when I paid off my student loans, right? Get the fuck outta here.
No, it didn’t. Maybe your score on Credit Karma did, but that’s because Credit Karma’s system of estimation (VantageScore I think it’s called) stops considering a loan the moment you pay it off, while the actual credit reporting agencies continue to consider it (re average age of accounts) for 10 years after closing if it was in good standing, or 7 years from ‘date of first delinquency’ if it was closed because of charge-off or something like that.
My own average account age is less than 10 years, yet my credit score is in the 800s, even though I have no outstanding loans, I just use my credit card for everyday purchases and pay it off every month.
So ‘get your ignorance the fuck outta here’ and open yourself to learning how things work.