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Comment by odiroot | Hacker News Reader

In the process of renting a flat in Germany, SCHUFA is not even the biggest travesty.

The worst part is potential tenants handing over full dossiers about their background to the prospective landlords. Passport copies, payslips, account statements and more. And as a tenant, you have no way of knowing when does it all end up.

At best it will be dumped into a paper recycling bin. But who knows if all these documents aren't sold further.

You also have no choice, you comply or you lose any chance of getting a flat.

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It is incredible the amount of private information that gets exchanged in Germany to access certain things. You brought up landlords, but I've heard crazy stories about job applications or applications to services that "require" an incredible amount of private information (often even including pictures too!) handed-over for completely obscure reasons with no recourse if your application is denied or simply ignored.

Are US "background checks" any better?

A US background check for most jobs is generally just a literal check on whether you've been charged with any crimes, and doesn't go much more detailed than that.

For renting apartments, it's just like this in NYC. But nothing like this in most of the country. I rented in Pittsburgh for a few years in college, and a suburb north of LA for a couple years after that, and the application documentation was much much less, pretty much just security deposit.

The issue in places like NYC (and some German cities like Berlin I gather) is that the extreme tenant protection laws mean that landlords have to go to extreme lengths to protect themselves from tenants. In NYC you could have a tenant not paying, damaging the property, and pushing out neighboring tenants, for well over a year before you can force them out, if they're ornery enough. It could kill your business, and it probably did kill the business of most landlords who didn't switch to extreme draconian documentation requirements in applications: multiple tax returns, multiple statements from all bank accounts, proof of employment, records of previous residences, contact info for previous landlords ...

There is a fundamental difference between being required to furnish the information yourself and the 2nd party asking a 3rd party for information.

If the 2nd party requires you to pay for their request to the 3rd party then I'd say there isn't a difference.

Although I mean unless you've established at least a correlation between some piece of information and say ability to pay then you really shouldn't be asking for it ...

> ob applications or applications to services that "require" an incredible amount of private information (often even including pictures too!)

Those crazy stories are indeed crazy and simply not true.

It's very similar in the UK. Most estate agents will use a third party these days, but the amount of information you have to hand over is ridiculous.

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