Comment by phaedrus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phaedrus | Hacker News Reader

Turo was using out-of-date info to validate my driver's license; I had to guess that it wanted the expiration date from before I renewed my license.

An identity check system used for VA loans uses your credit history to come up with secret questions. It's multiple choice and they auto-generate convincing other answers and/or some questions are completely auto-generated "ringers" which you must answer none of the above.

(The questions are things like "Which of the following banks have you had a car loan through?" "Which of the following addresses have you had?")

Problem is, I have very little credit history, so the likelihood of getting a question I can answer is near zero. On the other hand, whatever source they're using also has some assumed-real but actually incorrect associations for me (again, because I have little real credit history, the credit check system seems to be "grasping at straws" to generate a report on me).

So I couldn't just answer "none of the above" for all of the questions, because at least 1 out of each batch of 4 was not an auto-generated made up question but a real question asking me to guess what mistaken answer to it they have on file. After several tries / refreshed batches of questions that were all unanswerable, it locked me out of the system.

On the other side of this, if you have a long credit history you just don't remember the answer for many of these things. What was my apartment number 15 years ago? Which county did I stay in for one month while I was in temporary housing waiting for a new job?

Now I had to look them up and have a lot of these written down for whenever I need to do a bank wire.

Suggestion: get and save a copy of your credit report from each of the major credit reporting agencies. They are required by to give you a free copy of your report if you request it, and you can ask for a copy annually [1].

Then when you get a question and you aren't sure if it is one of the "ringers" or one of the ones that comes from errors on your credit report, you can check the reports to help decide.

I've got a similar problem, due to the post office trying to be helpful. Briefly, a neighbor with the same last name as me got married, changed her last name, and her husband moved into her house. Years later they moved and submitted a change of address form. The PO noticed the name on the form did not match the name in their records for that address, but did match the name on my address, assumed I was the one moving, and so it was my address that got changed, not my neighbors. We got it straightened out, but now my credit reports show me being at that other address for a few weeks.

[1] https://www.usa.gov/credit-reports

It's a catch 22 - in the UK at least, answering those questions is how you sign up for a credit report in the first place.

Same in the US. In the US it helps that there are 3 major credit bureaus. When you ask for your free annual report, you have to answer the questions for each.

Unless there is a lot of wrong information in your report, there is a good chance at least one of them won't use the wrong information in their set of questions.

Once you've got one downloaded and saved, you can try again with the others, checking any questions you are unsure about against the first download.

I have the same problems. I am an American who has lived overseas for many years. These questions about my credit history are full of things that I guess are connected with other people. Very frustrating.

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