Hacker News Reader

Comment by kens | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy to see Experian fined. Last year, Experian kept sending me spam with the footer "This is not a marketing email" and I kept trying to unsubscribe. Eventually, I filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that this violated CAN-SPAM.

I'd like to think that my report contributed to this fine (although that's probably optimistic). In any event, Experian had to take the time to respond. They also canceled my unwanted "complimentary membership with Experian CreditWorks Basic", which ended the spam. So I recommend filing complaints if appropriate.

View on HN

Your story sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I just looked in my email archive, and it appears I did the same thing around the beginning of 2021, when Experian also automatically signed me up for "CreditWorks" after I disputed fraud with them[0]. They were sending almost-daily spam. ("Your Dark Web scan is complete!" "Congrats, your membership's been upgraded!" "Important Information about your credit score!")

I wrote to the FTC instead of the CFPB, and got a form letter back for my efforts. Mail from *@*.experian.com is still blackholed, so I guess this is a good reminder that rule is there, if I'm ever required to deal with those assholes again.

[0] Supposed past-due electric utility account in a state in which I've never set foot, let alone owned or rented property. Interestingly, this only showed on my Experian report, but not TransUnion or Equifax, so I'm pretty sure it was a reporting mistake as opposed to intentional identity theft.

Ha! I recall the exact same thing happening to me. I guess they decided that if they sign people up for some nonsense service then there is a "business relationship" and they're free to spam all they want.

glad to see it getting slapped down.

I’ve also had good results from reporting CAN-SPAM violations, or just threatening to. When I get marketing emails without a working unsubscribe link I send a message to customer support saying that I’ll report each subsequent email I get as a violation. In one case the violator didn’t offer email or chat based support so I just reported each email, and they quickly taped off before stopping entirely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com