Forewarn gives realtors access to buyers' histories with a phone number
therecord.media
therecord.media
So discrimination is ok because you know, we have to make as much money as possible
> “The real estate agent can essentially screen out people they don't want by saying, ‘Oh, this person drives a Ford truck and I only want to sell to high end people so I'm just gonna get rid of this customer'”
I sense a tone of sarcastic incredulity in this question but... yes? If you want to run background checks on people that's one thing, but A) it should cost money if for no other reason than to stop people scraping other's information for no reason, B) it should only be accessible if you can provide a justification for why you need that information, like you're trying to hire someone for a job or something.
Like in a minority of cases, for example the sex offender registry[1] comes to mind, I can understand why the public has an interest in having that information be readily available. For your average Joe Blow with a parking ticket or who stole a beer once? If he's done his time, leave him be.
1: Of course that system has all kinds of it's own issues but that's another conversation.
This is one of those things some people are okay with, up until the point where they get bitten by it. It's weird enough when someone sends you a congratulations on your new baby when you haven't told anyone, but it's really weird when you get the same congratulations for the baby didn't have.
Except replace "having a baby" with "went to prison." I think even you'd be upset if you started losing out on job opportunities because one of these services confused you with a convict of a similar name or address. Or your neighbors start dealing in scuttlebutt regarding something from these platforms.
People aren’t “ok with it”. The idea that people are ok with spying is one of those lies that the surveillance industry tells themselves. But they know it’s not true, which is why it’s always much harder to not be spied on than to accept the default. That’s why settings keep reverting to spying, and why almost no one chose to let Facebook track them when Apple gave the equal-handed option.
I mean, the person I'm replying to justified their stance by basically say, "well the government does it and this power shouldn't be limited to just government bureaucrats" Which indicates to me that this an issue that falls largely across party lines. That would also explain why California's practically the only state with privacy laws with teeth.
> I think even you'd be upset if you started losing out on job opportunities because one of these services confused you with a convict of a similar name or address.
Wait a sec, though. I think significantly fewer people (read: almost no people) are "okay with" misinformation being reported about them, than are okay with actual information about their history being reported. There are three separate cases here: (1) accurate information regarding whether a applicant is a potentially good customer based on their history, (2) accidentally inaccurate information about that, and (3) fraudulently inaccurate information about that. The "some people" who are okay with "this" are okay with the first. If you have to lump the second and third in to drum up outrage, maybe that's a sign that the outrage is not all that appropriate.
Requiring data sold to be accurate is a type of privacy regulation. And it's one that would basically kill all of these industries because nobody can make that guarantee.
Honestly, a question like this makes me wonder how large is the bubble of people that think this way.
This seems similar: "Do you want only the government doing that bad thing?" Our knee-jerk reaction is "no".
If B is "and is a feminist" it wouldn't surprise me if people implicitly understand A as "and is not a feminist" despite it not being worded that way.
Which might make us question why anyone has this much info on my without my knowing it
For most people it won’t matter. But for the people it does matter for, it must be an utter terror.
Or maybe just ban the selling or sharing of data about people.
Edit: wouldn’t hurt to file a complaint with your state’s attorney general as well. Always Be Establishing A Papertrail.
Information on credit reports is routinely wrong, and there in many cases it is virtually impossible to remove. I've had some random addresses listed as "previous addresses" on my credit report for decades, and no matter what sort of letters I write or how many hoops I jump through, they remain.
I got a new phone number last year, and still occasionally receive calls from whoever it was in South Carolina who previously had this number. What are the odds that a realtor is getting that person's data, instead of mine?
What if you are on a family plan, it is a business phone, or registered in someone else's name?
These may sound like edge cases but even if it is only 5% of people that's tens of millions of people in the USA alone who could potentially get screwed by this.
Part of me thinks it would be a service for some newspaper to just publish a searchable website of all of it, so people can really feel the impact of it. It would be impossible to ignore. Or maybe just the info for all politicians in Washington.
Of course, this would enable all of the bottom-feeding scammers to get it too, so it would probably do more harm than good.
Unfortunately this service already exists, but is not as yet public. It's called XKeyscore.
Things are sitting on the market for weeks. They get one offer, not cash, under asking, and they take it. Times have changed.
It does take small amount of effort and research plus the time to show the property yourself.
As a first time buyer, the commission was totally worth it for such a major purchase. Yes, I could self-educate, but that leaves me open to beginner's mistakes.
As a first time seller, the amount of work to get my house sold was INSANE, even though I was only there three years. Yes, I could do it myself, but I have better things to do, and in this case, beginner's mistakes could have implications if I violate a law I don't understand.
It's the same reason why some people prefer to sell cars to a dealer instead of selling private market, or buying cars from a dealer instead of private market.
Realtors work very, very hard; and they aren't getting rich. If it was as easy as you think, no one in their right mind would pay the commission.
[1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11980019/national-association-real...
Your hand-wavy "I might do something wrong" is just ignorant FUD.
You're underestimating the value of my time, the amount of nitpicking that is involved with compliance, and the amount of haggling my realtor did behind the scenes.
They left at least 20% on the table because they:
- Set the initial price so high that no one else looked at it (even though the price they set it at was probably slightly below market)
- Further scared off buyers by dropping the price (people probably wondering what's wrong with the place)
- Jumped on my offer without waiting for other bids (I would have gone much higher if I had found myself in a bidding war)
- Thought they could sell to another buyer while we were under contract (who knows how much they had to pay the other buyer to walk away)
All because they didn't have an agent telling them not to do any of this stuff.
But hey, they didn't have to pay that 3% commission!
I’m just telling you I witnessed firsthand someone screwing themselves by thinking they were smart enough to do it on their own.
ymmv
Attacks on Real Estate Agents: Be Prepared
Last month, the attack on a real estate agent in Encino, California, was brought to light as the incident was caught on camera. While we have all heard stories regarding the increase in attacks on agents, seeing it happen live on video made it very real for many and greatly impacted the agent community. No one wants to go to work afraid, not knowing who they will encounter each day.
Above is from Forewarn's blog https://www.forewarn.com/blog/attacks-on-real-estate-agents-...
There, fixed that for them.
It says "for California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Texas, and Montana residents only".
The rest of us should talk with our state lawmakers?
Do these actually work, or are they yet another method of collecting information?
Maybe I'm just jaded and skeptical.
> Importantly, FOREWARN’s products and services contain information that is collected, processed, sold, or disclosed subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), pursuant to the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA), and/or is considered publicly available information. Therefore, FOREWARN does not maintain processes for consumers to submit requests to FOREWARN under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or any other state privacy law that exempts or excludes information subject to the GLBA or DPPA, or publicly available information
IE, if they're reporting on old publicly available data that's since been corrected, are they in compliance with the law?
I've had problems exactly once, when an item sent was damaged in transit and returned to the mom-and-pop shop, and they couldn't get in touch with me. When I hadn't received the item two weeks after purchase, I called them and they happily sent a replacement.
So, while every real estate agent has cheap and instant access to all this data, the public is behind a paywall to see which doctors have been sanctioned. Where did we go wrong?
I could go on, but the list is basically what the average American seems to chide the EU for
> In addition to those records, the product — owned by the data broker red violet — also supplies a given individual’s address history; phone, vehicle and property records; bankruptcies; and liens and judgements, including foreclosure histories.
> “It can be real creepy and you have to swear that you’re not going to use it in a wrong manner,” Hicks added, referring to Forewarn rules which say real estate agents can’t share data from the app publicly or with third parties, or use the app to pull information on non-professional contacts.
And with ~1.5M Realtors in the US, working for ~1/3M real estate firms, you know there will only be a trivial number of cases where it this product is misused...right?
As an anecdote, my neighbors recently were screwed by a realtor that pressured them into a place where they then needed to drop 150k on repairs (about 15% total value). That same realtor was pressuring our HOA president to literally make up information for the resale information so that the forms could be handed back to the realtor just a couple days sooner. Of course all liability would have been on the HOA president and not the realtor.
With that said, a good history of what the realtor has sold before, & how the homebuyers felt about it would be a great tool..