When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder.

Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is just wow.

First of all, I noticed that American Express casually requests my report a few times per year. Well, I guess, if I lose my job, they will know soon! Besides Amex, the only other requests were the background checks when I actually applied for jobs, so everything else is fine.

But you know what else is there? All my fucking paychecks for all companies I used to work for here in the US. Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.

Looking forward for the moment when all this data is leaked, because, you know, Equifax has some history [1].

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/equifax-data-breach-...