Consumer complaint received 2019-02-24
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: NJ
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
NB : THE FORCED BIRTHDATE INFORMATION REQUIRED TO SUBMIT THIS IS NOT MY BIRTHDATE. MY BIRTHDATE IS PRIVATE AND I WILL NOT ENABLE THE DYSFUNCTION I REPORT BY PROVIDING THE OFFENDING ENTITIES MY BIRTHDATE. 


XXXX XXXX is falsifying my identity and my credit report by reporting the personal information of another person to my credit report. I just had an extended conversation with XXXX about this in which it refused to stop injuring me in this way unless I talked to several other people in several other offices than the one I was speaking to. 

Specifically, because I am an authorized user on another persons credit card, XXXX reports the activity for that card to my credit report. This does me next to no good while signficantly harming me. XXXX reports a birthdate that is not mine to credit agencies. I have done everything that I reasonably should be expected to do to stop it from doing so, but it continues to falsify my identity in doing so. 

When I have reported the false birthdate to Equifax and other credit bureaus, they refused to remove it. They have no proof that I was born when they claim that I was born because they could not possibly have it, unless they are part of a larger criminal network which would not surprise me. Yet the CFPB gives the benefit of the doubt, for some God-forsaken reason, to predatory agencies like consumer reporting ones and a multi-billion dollar XXXX that will not pay for the kind of cyber security or even basic programming that it needs to run the kind of business it gets away with running. 

Neither should I be put in a position of having to prove my birthdate to credit bureaus for several reasons. First, my birthdate is private and credit bureaus are not entitled to have it. If they insist on reporting private information that they have collected without my permission from secretive and shady sources, they, not I, should be forced to prove the validity of what they report. Yet neither the CFPB, nor the FTC, nor any law enforcement agency has forced credit bureaus to verify, through an official source, what my birthdate is. If a credit bureau can not prove the birthdate that some XXXX  agency, whether it is XXXX XXXX, or any other one, dumps into my report, what are individual consumers suppose to do, other than to try to document it for a saner age? 

The CFPB should stop Equifax and any consumer reporting agency from reporting personal information such as a birthdate unless and until it can verify it from a legitimate source other than the gazillion sewage lines that are allowed to operate as consumer data collection agencies. Since law enforcement agencies have missed the point for half a century or more, this includes predatory agencies like Equifax, XXXX and their ilk, as well as XXXX and its ilk. 

In addition, the CFPB should stop any agency that it can from abusing private information such as birthdates, passing them on, or making use of them in any way for their profit-making schemes. If the XXXX can manage to call out XXXX for privacy violations, why are US regulators still in the mud wallow that gave rise to it in the first place? It would be nice if we stopped slinging sewage in all directions and cleaned it up at home so that others dont have to.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation