Comment by vavoida | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by vavoida | Hacker News Reader

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FYI in case you speak German, this project is currently all over the news in Germany, causing quite a stir.

TV http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/schufa-101.html https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/wdr-aktuell/vi... https://www.n-tv.de/ratgeber/Aktivisten-wollen-Schufa-Code-k...

Online https://www.wired.de/collection/life/openschufa-macht-bonita... http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/service/kreditwuerdigkeit-w... https://www.golem.de/news/openschufa-reverse-engineering-der... https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/OpenSCHUFA-Projekt-w... https://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/openschufa-algorithmu... https://www.futurezone.de/netzpolitik/article213448091/OpenS... https://netzpolitik.org/2018/jetzt-mitmachen-wir-knacken-die...

most motivational video, ever https://youtu.be/HBsD8BdXSCY

2 current related article worth reading http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/regierungsberater-gerd... http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/dass-wir-ueberwach...

(disclaimer I'm part of the team)

Did you also cite the part where you are being financially supported by Bertelsmann Stiftung who have a competing product (Arvato Infoscore)? Though I am not sure if it is as bad as they claim...

a. is disclosed by our partner algorithmwatch b. the funding is not for this project c. see https://twitter.com/OpenSchufa/status/964408780162150400 "Die SCHUFA ist die bekannteste Auskunftei & Marktführer; wir fordern in unserer Projektbeschreibung u.a.: "Die SCHUFA & andere Auskunfteien müssen öffentlich & permanent darlegen, wie ihr Score funktioniert bzw. welche Modelle/Annahmen ihm zu Grunde liegen (Nachvollziehbarkeit)" d. read https://okfn.de/blog/2018/02/openschufa-english/#update (we already requesting infoscore Consumer Data GmbH data)

For everyone not fluent in German:

c. "The SCHUFA is the best known credit reporter & market leader. In our project description we ask: The SCHUFA & other credit bureaus must publicly and permanently explain how their score works and which models / assumptions are based on it (traceability)"

Infoscore is a <censored> company. They have a debt collection and a rating arm which are officially independent.

They also have a legal arm (Haas & Partner) in the same building (again "independent"), who collect legal fees on top of Infoscore's debt collection fees -- a practice that has been deemed illegal by several federal courts.

The legal arm is largely automated, so the "lawyer" fees are questionable.

Good luck convincing Germans to surrender their data. I would be very surprised seeing this working out.

Also, you will get data from a very skewed demographic.

AFAIR there is an upcoming EU law which requires (at least some) transparency on how scores are evaluated, in expectation of algorithms making life changing decisions. We'll see how that's panning out.

EDIT: to clarify, I'd love to see this working out. But I never would give data of this kind to an unknown organization.

We are trying to convince them.

Here are the live stats from the requests https://selbstauskunft.net/statistiken

Skewed demographics are on the radar (we know we are in bubble). EU regulation 2016/679 GDPR with May 25th is also on the radar.

For more related projects see http://mydata.org

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