protecting your credit and privacy

PROTECTINGYOUR CREDITAND PRIVACY

BLOWNMORTGAGE.COM LENDER HOTLINE: 888-581-5008

BLOWNMORTGAGE.COM

I wanted to shed a littleinsight on what I think

are some very disturbingpractices that credit

providers are engaging into make additional

money at your expense.BLOWNMORTGAGE.COM

LENDER HOTLINE: 888-581-5008

Say you are interested inrefinancing your home. You

go to LendingTree.com orLowerMyBills.com and fill

out an online inquiryexpecting 4 lenders to

compete for your business. You get tons of phone

calls. You did want them tocompete, right?

So after the initial flurry of calls yousettle on a lender or two to investigateyour options and complete a loanapplication. The lender needs to lookat your credit, and so you provide themthe authorization to do so. They giveyou a quote and you contemplate theoffers from the lenders you liked.

Then, mysteriously, yourphone rings. It’s anotherlender. Not one of theoriginal four. Thenanother lender calls, andanother lender andanother. None of themfrom the original 4 youwere told would competefor your business.

They all tell you that what youare being offered is terrible,that they can beat the rate andthe closing costs of what youare being offered. You arefrustrated at the new wave ofrandom calls and are nowconfused about your bestoptions.

WHATHAPPENED

What happened was when you provided theauthorization to "pull" your credit from therepositories (Equifax, TransUnion, Experian) therepositories turned around and SOLD yourinformation and the fact that you were in themarket for a refinance to a whole additional setof mortgage lenders! These mortgage lendersbuy these leads – called "trigger pull" leads andtry to steal you away from the banks you’vestarted working with.

HOW DOTHEY DO

Each inquiry type is coded with a special designation onyour credit report. Auto inquiries are different frommortgage inquiries are different from self inquiries. Thecredit bureau pulls a report of all people who haveinquiries that match the mortgage code designation andthen sells your "credit header" information. The headerinformation includes your name, address and telephonenumber; it may also contain your current mortgageholder and balance information. Mortgage companieslooking for cheap leads buy these every day (deliveredvia spreadsheet over the internet) and then feed them totheir loan originators to try to get business (you).

WHY I HATE THIS

1. You don’t get to decide if your information issold or not. The credit bureau sells it (for about$1 a record) as soon as you make an inquiry in to

refinancing. So if you were only expecting 4people to call (through an online site likeLendingTree) or even if you went to your

mortgage broker that you’ve been using for 20years these companies will still sell your

information. You’ll be bombarded by companiesall day long once your credit is pulled.

2. Most of the companies that buythese try to do business on the

cheap. They buy these cheap, cold,leads and feed them to their

hungry LO’s who will do and sayanything to lock you in to a deal

with their company.

3. Most of these leads go to thebottom rung people at thecompany. Companies save their"expensive" leads for their bestpeople and feed their worst andnewest the cheapest leads –trigger pull leads included.

4. They compete solely by tryingto steal your business away fromsomeone else. This means theyare prone to bait-and-switchtactics and the heart ache thatcomes with it.

If you choose to businesswith someone who gotyour information from atrigger-pull credit lead,and then piqued yourinterest by quoting ratesand fees lower than whatyou were previouslyquoted you are walking into the lion’s den.

You will be eatenalive and will notbe happy withyour loan whenall is said anddone.

I recommend not working with anyonewho you didn’t solicit directly either viayour personal inquiry or through theinternet to a company likeLowerMyBills. When someone jumps into the picture at the perfect timerecognize that they bought your data,with out your permission, from thecredit agencies that sold your data, without your permission

What can you do to protect your credit dataand not having it fly around the internet tothe people that use these trigger leads? Youcan force the credit agencies not to sell yourcredit data as a lead. Do this by going to:https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ or bycalling 888-567-8688. I highly recommenddoing this as soon as possible. If anyone callsyou unsolicited while you’re in the process ofrefinancing tell them thanks but no thanks.

T O L E A R N M O R EBLOWNMORTGAGE.COM

C L I C K H E R E

Justin McHood is Americas MortgageCommentator and has been providingMortgage commentary for over 10 years.

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY JUSTIN MCHOOD

MORTGAGE COMMENTATOR

Information Originally Published:April 25, 2007BLOWNMORTGAGE.COM

LEARN MORE ABOUT MORTGAGE COMMENTATOR:

MORTGAGECOMMENTATOR.COM

FACEBOOK.COM/MORTGAGECOMMENTATOR

@MORTGAGECOM_

protecting your credit and privacy

Real Estate

promoting health protecting privacy: a primer

1 computer & web security security problems in computer use...

protecting your usersâ€™ privacy

protecting employee privacy (read-only)€¦ ·...

federal trade commission protecting consumer privacy

protecting beneficiary privacy - reliefweb

protecting privacy from aerial surveillance

the electronic communications privacy act: promoting...

protecting privacy from aerial surveillance (pdf)

protecting patient privacy:

protecting location privacy fromuntrusted wireless service

fair credit reporting act - protecting consumer rights...the...

consumer credit. basic consumer credit laws laws protecting...

protecting your clients' privacy

perspective court must keep protecting privacy

social privacy protector - protecting users’ privacy in

privacy protecting technologies

protecting personal privacy

effective tips for implementing a successful …...promoting...

protecting privacy in terrorist tracking applications