But, I didn't opt in for them to have this information about me to begin with.
Everyone is up in arms about Facebook and Google collecting our information... meanwhile credit bureaus are sitting in the shadows giggling to themselves
Contrast that with e.g. the somewhat recent revelations that cell carriers have been selling individuals' granular, de-anonymized location history data to, essentially, anybody willing to pay.
From a privacy standpoint, which I think is the context here, I consider the latter sort of thing to be far worse.
Democrats and Republicans alike want to use the threat of regulation and anti-trust action to force social media companies to adopt moderation policies favorable to them. They both recognize (IMO correctly) that they must make these threats; principled adherence to economic liberty leaves one without leverage and is likely to result in companies simply caving to one's opposition (c.f. the behavior of most companies with respect to China).
Credit bureaus don't influence elections, ergo there is little advantage to be gained by making threats against them.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/01/texas-social-media-l...
https://www.flgov.com/2021/05/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs...
Also, you might give your bank employment details, and your bank will most likely send that info to a credit agency as well.
There's not much of an escape.
ADP Rep: "Hey, we have an exciting new feature to offer you! We partner with the worlds premiere credit and employment reporting agency to eliminate the hassle of salary and employment verification."
VP, HR: "Go on..."
ADP: "If you opt in to this innovative program, you'll never again have to respond to your employees' lenders or landlords. 97% of banks participate in this program. Instead of them asking their applicant—your employee—for paperwork that you have to deal with, they come direct to the source automatically. Again, this is at no additional cost. It's included with our Premium Payroll Plus offering. Interested?"
HR: "Yeah, of course. One less thing I have to deal with"
ADP: "And the best part is you'll then qualify for a substantial discount on our partner's Employment Data System. Rest easy with unlimited verification reports for all your prospective new hires"
HR: "Anyone ever turn this down?"
ADP: "Almost never."
Although all that said for any major loan the bank is going to ask you to provide detailed proof of all income, assets, etc. They likely use this service as a check to make sure you aren't trying to overstate your income.
You kind of need a bank, if you go around with cash the police or other criminals can just seize it.
You also may want an address to live somewhere, I'd rather live in a house than in a car.
The NFT would be completely irrelevant here. Basically I assume you are claiming copyright over your salary and personal information. Unfortunately you can't trademark facts, so this approach isn't viable.
That being said, since both NFT ownership and our legal systems rely on consensus and majority opinion, it's not hard to imagine a corrupt society in which the opinion of judges is disregarded in favor of blockchain consensus.
Edit: you might be joking but it's an interesting question nonetheless because it highlights how various systems compete for legitimacy :)
According to Peter Thiel “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system...” https://theintercept.com/2016/10/31/trump-fan-peter-thiel-sa... So never-mind the non-millionaires.
However it is really nice to see efforts by some regular people out there setting up services such as https://yourdigitalrights.org which is the service I just used to request my information from Equifax. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. I suppose if they do not respond in 45 days I'll file a complaint with the CA Attorney General to put yet another ping regarding Equifax on their radar. https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-busine...
This shows that ultimately it is the regular people who drive progress, while the powerful and the wealthy just take credit for it.
Ultimately United States will transition to European-style privacy laws when it comes to private information like income and these credit agencies will be abolished, but the way to get there is for the regular non-millionaire people to exercise whatever "rights" they kinda have to ultimately get these annoyances shut down.
Though some companies will do a background check on all new hires (again, with your permission) which would include employment verification.
Get the job offer and negotiate salary before agreeing to a background check. Let them make the offer be contingent on the results of those checks (and drug screen or security check or whatever else they want).
But before turning in notice on your current job, wait until all checks are completed and make them reissue the offer letter with all contingencies removed. Otherwise you're still at risk of them pulling the offer while you're busy packing up your desk.