The Work Number: credit score but for your employment history – by Equifax

A vent: why is it any of your business why I had X months without work? Maybe I had enough money not to work for a bit and felt like doing something different. Why am I obligated to continuous labour even when I don't need it. Why am I subject to your judgement for not renting out my life at every possible moment?

The US is rapidly catching up with China in the field of authoritarianism.

I see no way this could go wrong at all.

Some more background on this here… Equifax gets the data directly from America’s biggest companies https://www.fastcompany.com/40485634/equifax-salary-data-and...

What is your S̶o̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ C̶r̶e̶d̶i̶t̶ Work Number score?

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-...

Should not be legal.

Like a slavery index?

What if you spent 10 years building a business abroad?

I remember early in my career being send by my employer on 'contract' assignments to other companies for 3 or 6 months. When I left that company and went interviewing, everyone was extremely concerned that I had been an independent contractor, some even saying they never employed such people. As though, once you've broken the chains, you're no longer employable.

I guess you don't need to be an authoritarian country. Just capitalist with no regulation...

Dystopian