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Comment by drb91 | Hacker News Reader

Opting in implies a choice.... often times the “choice” is “give up your personal information or you can’t get the service at all”, even if the service is, say, a water utility.

A large part of the problem is that companies can pretend to use the information as an ID when actually using it to just get credit history. I wish we could simply pass a law saying that identity verification cannot use SSN, and that one must separately opt in to credit checks than to id verification.

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> service is, say, a water utility

If you need to pay using a credit card then it makes sense that you must get your credit checked.

But there are always alternative payment methods that don't involve credit (like pay by cash). If you truly do not want to consent to having a credit history, you can avoid it.

The way utilities work is equivalent to a credit card: you use the service over the course of a month/year, then at the end you pay for what you used. This is a form of debt. If you could pay at the atart, this would be alleviated, but you don't know how much you will use at the start. I'm sure there are various other solutions, but none as simple as verfiying credit history, then waiting to charge until the end of the period.

A solution that is as simple: Pay a deposit.

If you don't pay the bill, they use your deposit and terminate your service.

My current ISP didn't even ask for a deposit. I just visited one of their storefronts so they could check my ID to verify my name.

In the past I was with an ISP that didn’t allow overages, so monthly bills were predictable. They required 1 months payment as a deposit up front and ran a credit check. The only alternative was dial up.

Just because someone isn’t giving you credit and never will doesn’t mean they won’t want your credit details. Nor that you will have leverage to refuse.

Credit check and deposit? Since they had no competitor, I guess they could get away with it.

Yes, some companies are rotten, but some do provide just as simple ways to get service without a credit check.

> but none as simple as verfiying credit history

Yes, it’s not a default opt-in. In fact, many people are unbanked in the United States. You can also choose not to open a bank account as well.

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