Consumer complaint received 2022-11-22
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: NC
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Information belongs to someone else

Complaint:
These XXXX accounts should be removed immediately due to non proper validation! If this furnisher provided anything to you it is likely a unlawful XXXX violation. You are in violation of possessing this data and the furnisher has admitted they never had the validation documents prior to XX/XX/XXXX, thats XXXX years of false reporting! 

The FCRA permits health service providers and their agents to furnish information relating to medical debt to consumer reporting agencies ( CRA ). However, the XXXX requires furnishers to encrypt certain details to protect the consumers privacy. Likewise, under XXXX, medical providers or their debt collectors may report medical debts to the CRA, provided that the information used is limited to the minimum necessary. 

It is highly likely that the furnisher ( FDS ) provided non-encrypted unlawful data to the CRAs ( Equifax, XXXX, XXXX ), the same non-encrypted unlawful data provided to me finally after months and months of following procedures in demanding that XXXX  validate XXXX debts they were collecting for XXXX  that had originated at XXXX in XXXX. 

But the document that was provided to me was in fact unlawful and it was non encrypted and contained XXXX not permitted by law and XXXX  was in possession of that XXXX and that remains unchanged today. If that XXXX and any relevant documents have been removed from the possession of XXXX  by XXXX  or XXXX  it is unknown to me as no attempt to notify me of such changes have not taken place which is continent with the overall cover up of this breach and the events surrounding it. 

Furthermore, The FCRA ( Fair Credit Reporting Act ) allows the reporting of information arising from the receipt of medical services, products or devices. However, the name, address, and telephone number of any medical information furnisher may not be included in the report unless the data is coded in such a manner that the name of the provider and the nature of the services can not be inferred by a person other than the consumer. 

The FCRA establishes a class of data furnishers termed medical information furnishers. A medical information furnisher is a person whose primary business is providing medical services, products, or devices, or the persons agent or assignee, who furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency ( CRA ) on a consumer. 

Examples include doctors, dentists, hospitals and their agents ( such as a health care debt collector ) such as XXXX  in this instance that furnishes information about consumers to a CRA. 

Medical service providers and their agents must register as a medical information furnished with each CRA to which they report medical debts. It is unknown at this time what relationship or contractual agreement exists between FDS and XXXX, XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX but that does not matter at this point because regardless of their contractual relationship, it is a fact that XXXX  is a stand alone, off-site premise, third part company that provides services to the all types of businesses an is not solely a medical debt collector and if so is owned and operated separate than XXXX  and XXXX Health XXXX 
And if FDS is in fact a " business associate '' ( collection agency or billing firm ) of XXXX or XXXX XXXX, they still failed in the distribution of this XXXX by reasonably limiting the amount of information disclosed for such purposes to the minimum necessary and to abide by reasonable requests for confidential communications. XXXX directly violated my rights to privacy in their possession of and distribution of my XXXX via the U.S. Mail and the potential sharing of data in interoffice file sharing. 
Even though The Privacy Rule permits covered entities to continue to use the services of debt collection agencies, Debt collection is recognized as a payment activity within the payment definition. And is governed under the definition of payment at 45 CFR 164.501. Through a business associate arrangement, the covered entity may engage a debt collection agency to perform this function on its behalf, HOWEVER, Disclosures to collection agencies are governed by other provisions of the Privacy Rule, such as the business associate and minimum necessary requirements as mentioned above.. 
It is clear that the collection agency employees at XXXX, knew less about their industry restrictions than myself or their actions were intentional and malicious as I will prove to be the case in this complaint. 
The fact that XXXX  has in their possession unlawful XXXX and distributed that via the U.S. Mail are direct privacy and XXXX violations- and eventually, there is case law to support such violations. 
With these known violations clear to anyone reading this, the XXXX debts that this complaint pertains to have not been pulled back by the medical provider to avoid potential suits against the me when there is evidence beyond the preponderance of a doubt that XXXX  has violated my rights and broken other laws not pertaining to XXXX at all.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation