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Re: extra address on credit report - Landlord Forum thread 332550

Re: extra address on credit report by John Brayton (Massachusetts) on March 24, 2015 @10:44

                              
There are several small red flags here:

* Additional address on the credit report.
* Huge hurry to move, and apparently planned poorly.
* Hesitant to provide SSN.

I might disregard any one of these alone, but the combination would make me decline the application.

John
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Re: extra address on credit report by J (FL) on March 25, 2015 @09:59 [ Reply ]
Yes, where there's smoke there's fire...
Re: Fraud could be at concern by Anonymous on March 26, 2015 @22:24 [ Reply ]
Hesitation to provide a SSI number and a desire to provide her own credit report documents may simply mean she is trying to save the time/money on running the reports (the cost of running one's credit/background check can really add up if one applies to multiple places before being accepted). Another possibility is that she has a "stalker" for an ex. (This could also be the reason she's in such a hurry to move with as little paper trail as possible.)

Fear of fraud is another reason, and an increasingly legitimate concern at that. My own experience has taught me as much:

• In less than six months I have had to replace a credit card I never lost because somebody managed to obtain the number and create a physical card they began to run at gas stations and retail stores.
• Less than two weeks ago my spouse had his ATM card at his skimmed by a food vendor (a blanket call went out because a lot of people at his work had their credit/ATM information lifted). Fortunately our bank prevented a large debit from going through, otherwise we could have faced a slew of bounced checks/auto payments — none of it through any fault of our own!
• Last summer a credit card company sent me a replacement for a card that expired and it never showed up. The account had to be canceled when I learned that the post office boxes had suffered a break-in at the time the card was expected. (The post office continued to keep recipients' mail behind the counter for more than six months afterward because they couldn't ensure that the lockers were safe!)
• A few years before that I had someone steal another credit card, again a card that I had never lost. The thief got away with charging thousands of dollars of Jet Blue airline tickets even though they were out of state, charged in a place I had never traveled to or from!
• In 2013 I had a medical procedure after which I was notified by letter that patient information was stolen out of a hospital administrative office.

On top of the above, we have what amounts to "the story of the week" in the media on how INSECURE our information has become. One of the nation's biggest health insurers recently got hacked, releasing millions of unencrypted patient data files complete with social security numbers, a national pharmacy chain had its ATM data breached. Ditto for Target, Home Depot and TJMaxx customers in recent years!

I have personally run into this SO MANY TIMES now that I can't blame anyone anymore for being wary. And I think, from a property management perspective, you've got to start taking the reports you see with more than one grain of salt. A friend of mine found out only after his elderly mother had died that someone managed to take out a loan against her house. I see this everywhere now, and often the first warning people receive is when an application for a job or housing is denied.

Rental and loan applications are perhaps the most vulnerable of all consumer records. Applicants are leaving more than they even leave at their doctor's offices: driver's license numbers, credit card numbers, bank accounts — everything necessary to sell their information on the black market.

Put yourself in the applicants' shoes: the more applications prospective tenants fill out the greater the risk that they will become victim of identity theft, even if the source of that theft is untraceable later (it could be an old office computer you failed to properly erase when you replaced it, a disgruntled employee who made off with it upon being let go, or presumed lost in a remodel or management change).

Stuff happens. Smart people realize that their most sensitive information is not secure — not just applicants' with something to hide.
    Again, what do you propose? by CCRider (CA) on March 27, 2015 @02:30 [ Reply ]
    So, should landlords not require applicants to fill out applications or run credit checks or prove their income?

    How would you choose a tenant?
      Re: Again, what do you propose? by Anonymous on March 27, 2015 @08:58 [ Reply ]
      I think poster is saying that tenant's need to be better informed that they aren't preserving anything by not giving out their SSN because there are so many other avenues for compromising their credit or stealing their identity. Poster is not advocating excluding SSN or other info from the form based on tenant's fears.

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