Hi there,
Based in BC. My grandpa passed away. No will. No executor.
I'm helping my mom sort out all the post-mortem paperwork.
Service Canada and CRA is being sorted.
Transunion has advised me to mail in a death certificate to report his death; this was what I also expected for Equifax but they seem to really be insisting on having proof of being an executor or a legal representative.
My grandpa died with only cash assets, which are accessible by joint bank accounts and had nothing else to his name. I really don't want to pay $200 for my mom to apply for a grant of administration in BC in the absence of an executor just so Equifax has the correct info. The grant of administration doesn't seem to be required for dealing with the CRA or Service Canada either.
I guess my question comes down to what is the risk of not reporting said death to Equifax? It sounds like there isn't really much risk in having the ID stolen, given my grandpa was already very old and any fraudulent new credit will basically be flagged by their systems.

This letter typically halts harassment from third-party collectors. When a primary company has exhausted its efforts to collect a debt, they often sell it to a third party. These third-party collectors may use various illegal tactics to recover the debt. However, they usually cannot provide copies of signed receipts, which gives them no basis to continue their collection efforts.
Re: Acct # Original-
Internal Legal Account #
To Whom It May Concern:
I am sending this letter to you in response to a notice I received from you on January 26, 2021. Be advised, this is not a refusal to pay, but a notice sent pursuant to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 USC 1692g Sec. 809 (b) that your claim is disputed and validation is requested.
This is NOT a request for "verification" or proof of my mailing address, but a request for VALIDATION made pursuant to the above named Title and Section. I respectfully request that your office provide me with competent evidence that I have any legal obligation to pay you.
Please provide me with the following:
• What the money you say I owe is for;
• Explain and show me how you calculated what you say I owe;
• Provide me with copies of any papers that show I agreed to pay what you say I owe;
• Provide a verification or copy of any judgment if applicable;
• Identify the original creditor;
• Prove the Statute of Limitations has not expired on this account;
• Show me that you are licensed to collect in my state; and
• Provide me with your license numbers and Registered Agent.
If your offices have reported invalidated information to any of the three major Credit Bureau's (Equifax, Experian or TransUnion), said action might constitute fraud under both Federal and State Laws. Due to this fact, if any negative mark is found on any of my credit reports by your company or the company that you represent I will not hesitate in bringing legal action against you for the following:
• Violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act
• Violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
• Defamation of Character
If your offices are able to provide the proper documentation as requested, I will require at least 30 days to investigate this information and during such time all collection activity must cease and desist.
Also during this validation period, if any action is taken which could be considered detrimental to any of my credit reports, I will consult with my legal counsel. This includes any information to a credit reporting repository that could be inaccurate or invalidated or verifying an account as accurate when in fact there is no provided proof that it is.
If your offices fail to respond to this validation request within 30 days from the date of your receipt, all references to this account must be deleted and completely removed from my credit file and a copy of such deletion request shall be sent to me immediately.
I would also like to request, in writing, that no telephone contact be made by your offices to my home or to my place of employment. If your offices attempt telephone communication with me, including but not limited to computer generated calls or correspondence sent to any third parties, it will be considered harassment and I will have no choice but to file suit. All future communications with me MUST be done in writing and sent to the address noted in this letter.
This is an attempt to correct your records, any information obtained shall be used for that purpose.
Best Regards,

Please read the whole thing before you post "Credit karma is not a credit bureau, they only report what they get from the Credit Bureau"
There seems to be something wrong with the reporting tools because myFICO app and Credit Karma are showing a collection (That isn't mine) that only appears on their Equifax reporting. I reached out to Equifax to see what this collection is and they have stated that I do not having anything in collection. I used the information from credit karma to track down the original creditor and collection company and they both have stated they have nothing on record for me in terms of collection. I insisted they check again based on the information and amount of the collection and they continued to explain that I am not in their system.
I followed up with Credit Karma to state yet again that nothing is appearing on my Equifax report in regards to a collection and they kept regurgitating "We are not a credit bureau, we only report what we get from them" and that I need to confirm with Equifax. So then I went and did that (again) and Equifax representative confirmed again that I do not have anything in collection. They stated that there has to be something wrong on their end. I followed up again with Credit Karma and they opened a ticket.
Has anyone else experienced issues with these reporting tolls. It's odd because myFICO app is also reporting that Equifax has a collection for me but after speaking with them (Equifax) again they stated that there is nothing to dispute since there is nothing in my collections.

So I talked to a customer service rep today, and according to them, the only address listed on my credit report is X. I asked them to check again, and then they found an additional address, which is my correct address "Y."
Y is listed on the Equifax website under "personal information" when I go to check my credit report. "X" is not anywhere on the Equifax website. The rep said that yes, "Y" is my "contact address" but "X" is the address on my credit report.
Does the rep know what they're talking about? I don't see address X anywhere on the website.
Is Equifax claiming to show me my credit report but not really doing so?
UPDATE: I confirmed this with a second group of representatives. They advised me to make a dispute. I tried making the dispute online, but the incorrect address doesn't show up on the website. There's a possibility that this wrong address was just added in the 5 days since my last report was pulled. I will update this post again once I get my new report, and say whether the wrong address appears then. I'm guessing that the hidden wrong address has been there for a long time, because I've been having verification issues for a little while (at least 3 problems in the past year, maybe a few before that but I'm not sure those were Equifax-related). I was able to use this wrong address to verify my identity in the phone system, whereas my correct address failed twice.
I have never been associated with address "X" in any way. I don't see any inquiries or credit products associated with that address, either in my credit reports or my email history or anything else. My oldest account is over 10 years old and still active. I have 5 total accounts and inquiry activity going back at least 2 years. Not a thin file. I checked all the websites of all the financial institutions I've ever knowingly worked with, including all the institutions that have soft or hard inquiries or accounts in my online report. My address is correct with all of them
I also asked the rep whether they could tell me what lender reported the incorrect address. They said they couldn't tell me.
UPDATE: Here is a table of all the reps and what they said:

Rep #	Day	I authenticated with	Rep easily found	Rep found with difficulty after I insisted	Rep could not find
1	1	correct address, failed	wrong address	correct address	N/A
2	1	correct address, failed	correct address	wrong address	N/A
3	1	wrong address, succeeded	correct address	N/A	wrong address
Supervisor 1*	1	wrong address, succeeded	correct address	wrong address	N/A
Supervisor of Supervisor 1	1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
4**	1	correct address, succeeded	correct address	N/A	wrong address
5***	2	correct address, succeeded	correct address (listed as a former address), wrong address (listed as current address)	N/A	new wrong address, wrong DOB
6	2	wrong address, succeeded	N/A	N/A	N/A
7	2	correct addresss, succeeded	N/A	N/A	N/A

*Supervisor 1:

• They claimed that they found the wrong address in a separate "section" by speaking to the technical team.
  • I asked them what this section was called and they said that they couldn't tell me. I asked them whether there was a way to refer to that section so that I could refer to it in the future with other CSRs. They said they couldn't tell me. Supervisor 1's supervisor said almost the same thing, but they said that I could call it the "former information" or something like that.
• They confirmed that the wrong address had not been added in the past 5 days (so it's not an issue with the credit report lagging).
• They claimed that the wrong address would have appeared on my paper report but would not have appeared on my online report.
• So I asked them "wait, so there is information in the paper report that is not on the website?" They said yes, that's correct, the website is a summary and they are working to add more information to the website.
• They claimed that they had removed the wrong address.
• They claimed that they would send me a copy of the paper report, and that the wrong address would no longer be listed.
• They claimed that, from now on, I could authenticate over the phone using my correct address instead of the wrong address, and the wrong address would not work.

**Rep 4:

• I called back and (for the first time!) was able to authenticate using the correct address.
• I asked the representative whether they could find that wrong address. They could not find it. That's good, but it might be that they just don't know where to look. I explained that it would appear on my paper report but not the website.
• I asked the representative whether that wrong address might have something to do with why my targeted offers don't show up on the Equifax website (I'm opted in; these offers have never shown up for me and I have some similar connection issues as well; creditkarma's Equifax section and my bank's Equifax-based credit score tracker don't work). They didn't think it was related: they said that, as long as my "current address" was correct, that wrong address shouldn't be an issue. I asked whether somehow that wrong address had counted as my "current address" since it was the one that authenticated me over the phone until Supervisor 1 fixed it. They didn't seem to think so. I asked them, in that case, why my offers didn't show up. They said that they forwarded my request to the technical team. I'll update if I hear back.

I will report back the next time my free Equifax report updates. At that point, I will be able to check on 3 out of my >=4 definitely-Equifax-related verification problems (credit score tracking from my bank, creditkarma Equifax data, targeted offers from Equifax . com).
UPDATE: 2 of my 4 Equifax-related verification issues went away immediately!!! (Equifax-based credit scoring widget on my bank website now works, it never has before for the ~6 months I've had the account; creditkarma Equifax data now works, it didn't before.) It sounds like Supervisor 1 is legit.
***DAY 2 UPDATE: The day after this, I checked my Equifax data on CreditKarma and at my bank's widget

• DOB drama: The bank's widget now showed a wrong DOB. I think I might know what happened there. On day 1, the first rep I spoke to said that I had no DOB listed. I've always had the correct DOB listed in the "personal information" section of equifax.com, but we know that there are secret extra data locations now so that makes sense. The rep said that I could add a DOB over the phone, which I did. I'm confident that I gave the correct date, we confirmed 3 times, but maybe something went wrong there. On the other hand, maybe something wrong got entered a million years ago. However, when I spoke to rep #5, they found this wrong DOB in seemingly the same place where rep #1 found the secret address and a missing DOB on day 1. So I think maybe the "secret zone" changed since day 1, maybe from what rep #1 entered on day 1.
• Name drama: The bank's widget now shows my name with a middle initial, which no Equifax rep has ever found on the phone. This has also never appeared on the Equifax website.
• Address updates not working: Rep 5 saw the incorrect address (which supervisor 1 removed yesterday) still listed as my primary address, with my correct address listed as a former address. I think this is new, because yesterday rep #1 didn't see my correct address at all, and they seemed to be looking at the same "secret zone" that rep #5 was looking at. I asked rep 5 whether maybe Equifax's data just hadn't updated yet. They said no, this is the most up-to-date data. I think that's wrong, but I'll check back later to see. I'm now able to authenticate with both addresses (the wrong one and the right one), so maybe somehow that wrong address came back since yesterday and pushed the correct address back to being a former address? That wrong address is not listed on the web services that use Equifax (creditkarma and my bank).
• New wrong address: When I look at my Equifax data on creditkarma, I can now see a new wrong address that I've never seen before. Rep #5 couldn't find that address, but it sounded like they didn't know how to look everywhere properly.

Backstory: 5 years ago, I found myself in a legal mess, that was publicly reported on. During that time, I got account closure notices from almost every financial firm that I held accounts at, and these notices would trickle in every few months like clockwork - I went through a cycle of opening accounts at new firms, moving money, closing accounts, and then a new account closure notice from the new firm, and repeat... I would ask the representatives for their reasons, but they would never give any reason beyond saying that it's confidential. I obviously figured it was due to the public legal mess. Anyways, after a difficult time, I was able to settle my case, without any formal criminal/civil conviction.
Now, I have a checking/savings account at a new bank for a few years (and counting...). But recently I got a notice from my retirement firm asking me to close my IRA accounts with them, and move it elsewhere. I'm surprised and I still can't understand what triggered it, since the case has been closed/settled for a long while now.
I pulled in all my credit reports (Equifax, Transunion and Experian) - my credit score is 700+. I also got my reports from LexisNexis, ChexSystems, Early Warning Services (EWS). There is no adverse event mentioned in any of them. Among these 6 reports, I saw that my retirement firm had accessed the EWS report at account opening. But clearly, it didn't cause any issue then, and nor did the report contain any adverse information.
How do I figure out what's triggering this recent closure, and how do I avoid it in the future? The reps won't say anything. I've been rebuilding my life slowly and steadily, and this episode has got me feeling a bit deflated.
As an aside, I feel sorry for those who have formal convictions and I can't imagine what they have to go through...I can't believe that all of them are getting locked out of the financial system?!

The guide below is intended to help folks who are victims of a specific form of identity theft. What I have detailed below is based on our experience in preparing and litigating these cases, as well as that of other colleagues.
As the focus is on the information, rather than myself, and as per Reddit rules. I prefer to remain anonymous here. For some quick background, I handle consumer credit reporting and debt collection issues, including litigating these cases. You can click my handle for more threads which I've commented on or written.
Please note this is educational, not legal advise. I am not your attorney, so your situation may vary. You are welcome to comment below, and I'll do my best to answer.
Please note that you should not skip any of the steps below. Some of these steps might be uncomfortable for you to take, but they are very much necessary for a succesful resolution.
First, it is important to understand the type of identity theft we are dealing with here. There are two broad types of identity theft:
a. Account takeover
b. Account opened in your name
(b) is where you opened an account, but someone ran up a lot of fraudulent charges in your name. #2 is where you never opened the account. Rather, your identity was compromised, and someone opened the account in your name.
For this discussion, we are only focusing on #2. I will come back to #1 in another thread.
So, you've got accounts which were opened in your name. Your credit score(s) may have tanked. You're stressed, and you realize that you are losing access to credit / financial opportunities. What do you do?

1. If possible, you should obtain the most official credit reports possible. there are two places to do this:

a. (Preferred): Obtain your free reports from the Annual Credit Report website, and save as a PDF. If that does not work, then order them by physical mail, Google Annual Credit Report PDF. You will fill out the form. As your reports arrive, scan and save for your records.
b. (If a does not work): You can purchase your reports from Myfico, or buy your 3-bureau reports from Experian.

1. Review your reports, and note all the accounts that are not yours. If you are not sure whether an account is yours (for example, a collections account where you don't know the name of the original credtior), the best thing to do is write to the collections agency, and request the name of the original creditor, and proof that you owe the debt. There are plenty of such letters online, or I can reply in the comments and share one.
   
2. Very important: This process is for accounts that are not yours. If the account was yours, and was transferred to a collection agency, OR if you just disagree with the debt, do not use these steps. More on that below.
   
3. Now, you need to obtain a police report. That is, you need to explain to your local police department, that you believe you've been a victim of identity theft. Tell them the accounts which are not yours.
   
4. What if you know who stole your identity? Worst yet, what if it was a relative or friend? I suggest telling the police that you believe you know who was responsible for this.
   

Why is this important? Well, there are lots of fraudulent identity theft claims. If the errors are not corrected, and you end up in court, every aspect of your case will be looked at in detail. The credit agencies and creditors hire private investigators in many cases. You also might have to appear in a deposition, where you are asked questions by an opposing attorney. Witholding the truth can destroy your case.
What if you don't want them to get in trouble? I get that. In most cases, the police are not going to do much if any investigating. However, if they do investigate, your friend or relative could get in trouble.
That is a risk. If you want to avoid it, and protect that person, then wait for the account to fall off your credit reports (which can take up to 7 years). Your credit will suffer for what they did, and you will lose out on opportunities. but I can also understand why you don't want to get someone in trouble.

1. People often ask if an FTC identity theft report is an alternative to a police report. It is, BUT please note that you get less results with it, when trying to get accounts removed. If the errors are not corrected, and you have to sue, most experienced attorneys (including me) will not bring a case with just an FTC report. It carries less weight, and because it's so easy, people more often lie. Going to the police station and physicallly obtaining a report is often a better approach.
   
2. It is now time to prepare your credit dispute letters. These will be sent to each credit reporting agency, via certified mail, at the addresses I've provided below. Attacthced to the letter will be:
   

a. Your photo ID
b. Proof of your address (a bill of any kind, or a bank statement).
c. A full copy of the police report.

1. Here is the letter. The fields in italics are for you to fill in.

Date
Dear (Experian/Equifax/ Transunion),
I am writing to you about accounts which do not belong to me. I believe that I've been a victim of identity theft. I have attached a police report which provides more details. Please review it.
Also attached to this letter are my photo ID, and proof of my mailing address. With all of this information, you should be able to investigate my disputes.
My full name is (full legal name). I was born on (date of birth). My address is (full mailing address). The last four digits of my Social Security Number are (last four of Social).
The first account which does not belong to me is with (name of creditor or collection agency). The account number is (account number as it appears on credit reports).
The second account which does not belong to me is with (name of creditor or collection agency). The account number is (account number as it appears on credit reports).
Please investigate these errors, and remove these fraudulent accounts. I look forward to hearing from you.

1. Here is the mailing address for each credit reporting agency:

a. Experian
PO Box 4500
Allen, TX 75013
b. Equifax
PO Box 740256
Atlanta, GA 30374
c. Transunion
PO Box 2000
Chester, PA 19016
Be sure these letters are sent via certified mail. Regular mail will not work here. Why? If the credit agencies don't respond, then you need proof they recieved the letters.

1. Wait up to 45 days for a response. You should track your mail to see whether it was recieved, and add 45 days to the date when it was recieved.
   
2. See if all of the fraudulent accounts were removed. If so, you're all set. Congratulations!
   
3. If some or all accounts remain, don't worry. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
   
4. You now want to scan the responses recieved to each dispute. You will need this information going forward.
   
5. You also want to make note of any credit denials that occured prior to the dispute letters. Scan them, or for your own notes, write a document as to what happened.
   
6. If you have a credit goal you want to achieve (like obtaining credit cards, or a mortgage), it could make sense to apply for those accounts, and either be denied for credit, or obtain a higher rate. This will help your case, because you can document your damages.
   
7. Now, you need to speak with an attorney, to explore whether you have a case.
   
8. Where can you find an attorney? You can ask around, or search online. Avvo can be a good resource, as can Yelp and Google. I do have colleagues who operate in various states, so you are welcome to comment on this thread, and I'll see whether I know someone who assist in your state.
   
9. You want to provide your attorney with your credit reports, the responses to disputes, proof of mailing, and your full dispute letters, as well as any denials of credit which you suffered. Also provide the police report, as that is really important. Most attorneys cannot assess your case until they have all of these documents.
   
10. Once in a while, the attorney will want to prepare and send off their own dispute letter. If so, let them. it can help your case, because you disputed the account twice, and it was not corrected twice.
    
11. The attorney will file your case, suing the applicable credit agencies and creditors or collection agencies. You never have to pay out of pocket, because by law, your attorney's fees are court costs are paid by the credit agencies and creditors, when your case settles or you win at trial. In other words, your lawyer represents you without you paying out of pocket.
    
12. You are entitled to damages. Your damages can be as little as a few thousand dollars, or in the hundreds of thousands. It widely varies.
    

In most cases, the accounts are deleted within 60 days of the lawsuit being served on the credit reports. However, this is not always the case.

1. However, the case can go on for another 6 to 18 months after that. The longer the case goes on, the more money you are likely to obtain when the case settles (97% of these cases settle before trial).
   
2. You may have to appear in a deposition, where the attorney for one of the defenedants asks you questions. Your lawyer will be present to protect you. Just answer questions truthfully.
   
3. Don't lie, by claiming you were a victim of ID theft when in fact you were not. You can be sued for fraud by the defendants (yes, this has happened), and be forced to pay their legal costs. Please note that debts incurred by fraud cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so these follow you around for potentially decades. You also can be prosecuted for lying to the police (yes, this has also happened).
   

If there are bad accounts on your credit report, there are many ways to address them. Taking the risk of going to jail or being sued is simply not worth it.

Hello!
My business was just approved for Chase Ink Business Unlimited Credit Card, and I would like to share data points in case someone is thinking of applying.
First, I was not even considering applying for this card because I'm over 5/24. I opened 6 personal credit cards within the last 24 months. However, if I had chosen to wait a month, that number could have been 4/24, as two of those cards would be 25 months old.
I received an invitation in the mail to apply, including an Invitation Number, and a Promo that reads: "Earn $750 cash back after you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first 3 months + 0% APR for 12 months, and $0 Annual Fee". With business annual reports coming up, and so many expenses within the next couple of months, I believe I can reach the spending required :-)
I applied last night, and they tried to pull my personal TransUnion report, but my credit reports were frozen. I got the following message: "First, call TransUnion at 1-888-909-8872 to remove the freeze. Then, call us at 1-877-260-0087 between 8 AM to 8 PM ET, Monday–Friday to let us know". It was already after 8 PM, so I had to do it the next day.
I removed the freeze, and called # 877-260-0087 Option # 2 [Do NOT enter SSN]... wait for Option "0" to connect with a specialist. The operator asked for my SSN and name, sent a text message to my cellphone for authentication, and pulled my Personal TransUnion. Then, she connected me to the Fraud Department.... the representative asked for my Name and SSN. I was on hold for around 4 mins. Application reviewed. Congratulations! Your business card has been approved :)
DATA POINTS:
Business Type: LLC
Business Age: Almost 11 months

• Personal relationship with Chase. I've been banking with Chase for almost a year, and have a personal Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card.

FLORIDA: pull from Personal TransUnion, Score: 756. (Credit score dropped 2 points after the hard inquiry).
Inquiries: 6 Mortgage inquiries, and 1 credit card inquiry.
Credit Utilization: 5% of $218,000 credit available.
Starting Line of Credit: $11,000
Business Bureaus They Report To: D&B, Equifax, Experian, SBFE. It requires to call DnB to ask them to report.
**\* It looks like this card does NOT REPORT to Personal Credit Bureaus. Chase only reports Negative information to personal credit if defaulting.
Hope this information can help someone, and would like to hear recommendations to better use this card

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. Let's dive in...
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STAT OF THE WEEK: Stripe surpassed $1 trillion in total payment volume last year. This insanely large number represents approximately 1% of the entire world's GDP.
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YouTube introduced several new shopping features to serve merchants and affiliates who create videos on their platform including Shopping Collections (curated storefronts for your profile), New Affiliate Hub (to find brands and products to feature), the ability to tag products across multiple videos, and an integration with Fourthwall shop. These new features will help YouTube catch up to TikTok when it comes to offering a streamlined storefront and affiliate program within the platform.
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Wix launched a new funding raising solution called Wix Donations to help non-profits and individuals run donation campaigns easily through their Wix websites. Now users will no longer need to employ third-party services to handle one-time or recurring donations. The move will put Wix in direct competition with sites like Funraise, OneCause, GiveButter, GoFundMe, and countless other donation enablement platforms. Wix's big advantage is that it's not just a donations platform. It also brings its other marketing tools into the equation for non-profits.
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eBay wants to help you dress better through the launch of its new generative AI-powered feature called “Shop The Look.” The feature suggests a carousel of images and ideas, based on your shopping history, to introduce other fashion items that may complement your current wardrobe. Shop the Look includes interactive hotspots that reveal similar items and outfit inspirations when tapped. The shopping results include both pre-owned and new items that match the user's personal style.
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TikTok's upcoming Instagram competitor app for sharing photos will likely be named TikTok Notes for some reason — a name that sounds more like a Google Keep competitor than an Instagram killer. TikTok users have been getting pop-up notifications over the past few days about a new TikTok Notes app to share photos. The notification says that TikTok is soon launching a “new app for photo posts” called TikTok Notes, and that users' existing photo posts will be shared on the app unless they opt-out.
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Chip winter is coming! Every big tech player is getting in on the chip war to seek control of the AI Throne. Last week Google partnered with Arm to make more of its own chips, announcing its new CPU named Axion which is set to be available for Cloud services later this year. Google says the chip will improve performance for “general-purpose workloads” such as open-source databases, web and app services, in-memory caches, data analytics engines, media processing — and of course, AI training.
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Meanwhile Meta just announced that its next generation of custom AI chips will be more powerful and able to train its ranking models much faster. The Meta Training and Interference Accelerator (MTIA) is designed to work best with Meta's ranking and recommendation models with the goal of eventually expanding the chip’s capabilities to begin training generative AI like its Llama language models. Beyond building the chips and hardware, Meta has made significant investments in developing the software necessary to harness the power of its infrastructure in the most efficient way.
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Last week, X began automatically changing “twitter.com” to “x.com” in links, but did so in the absolute worst way possible. The automatic text replacement was unintentionally applied to any URL ending in “twitter.com” even if it wasn't actually a Twitter link! The change went live on X's app for iOS, but not on the Android app or web version, and remained a problem for a couple days before the company fixed the issue so that it wouldn't affect non-Twitter.com domains.
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But hey — changing domains from one URL to another is difficult. Just ask WooCommerce, which recently moved its domain from Woo.com back to WooCommerce.com after facing SEO challenges. The company wrote in a blog post, “Moving to Woo.com created challenges for our users to find WooCommerce in Google searches, which were made worse following Google’s March update. To address those challenges, we assembled a group of SEO experts and consultants to evaluate the best way to build on the strength of the WooCommerce brand. We collectively believe that reverting back to WooCommerce.com will deliver the best outcomes for WooCommerce and the wider Woo community.”
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Amazon's search results have become less self-preferential, according to research from a University of Minnesota economist who analyzed over 8 million Amazon search listings across 22 Amazon domains between June 2023 and Mar 2024. In a paper titled “Amazon Self-preferencing in the Shadow of the Digital Markets Act,” Joel Waldfogel, professor of applied economics, concluded that after the EU's designation of Amazon as a gatekeeper, the rank of their own products changed substantially, falling from a 30 to a 20 rank advantage, while other brands' search ranks did not change. Amazon says it does not give preference to its own products within its search results, and it never has. Last month it published a compliance report that describes how the company has responded to the DMA, maintaining that its ranking processes are unbiased and compliant with Article 6(5) of the DMA, which forbids self-preferencing.
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Swiggy, an India food delivery app, is under heat for taking away health insurance from riders when they need it most. Swiggy rates its riders — bronze, silver, gold — depending on how many deliveries and points they earn each week. The top tier, gold, includes company-sponsored health insurance. The problem with this system? It recalculates weekly! So what ends up happening is that a rider reaches “gold” status, which makes them eligible for health insurance, but then if they get sick or injured and subsequently stop working, they lose their gold status the following week, and thus lose their health insurance.
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OpenAI shared that Klarna's adoption of its technology is estimated to yield the company a $40M improvement in profits this year. OpenAI's chatbot now field two-thirds of Klarna's customer service chats, which used to require 700 full-time contracted employees.
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Best Buy must have been paying attention because the company announced that it too plans on incorporating AI into customer support, working with Google Cloud and Accenture. Best Buy detailed the new strategy within days of reported layoffs that impacted its Geek Squad customer support operations.
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Shopify will be hosting an exhibit at Retail Technology Show for the first time ever, which will take place at London's Olympia on the 24th and 25th of April. Shopify will be taking the opportunity to demo its latest enterprise and retail solutions on stand 5B60.
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OpenAI hired former Shopify executive Glen Worthington, who previously worked as VP of global support at Shopify, to lead product and customer support. Under Worthington's leadership, Shopify embarked on a plan to put AI at the center of its work with merchants, and now he will lead User Operations at OpenAI to ensure that companies using its products have a good experience.
___
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is looking to improve Britain's “highly concentrated” consumer credit ratings market, which it says is currently not serving consumers well. Much like in the States, the consumer credit ratings market is dominated by Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion within the country, and the FCA feels that the lack of competition within the sector necessitates immediate action. I mean, it's not exactly a new triopoly that formed overnight, so I'm curious what the urgency is, but either way, I support reform in this space.
___
Meta lowered the minimum age for WhatsApp users from 16 to 13 in the UK and EU, which the company says puts the age limit in line with that in the majority of countries. The campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood said the move “flies in the face of the growing national demand for big tech to do more to protect our children.” I say that the move is inconsequential, given that Meta has no real guardrails in place to verify the ages of users who sign up. They might as well make the minimum age 3 years old, as no-one's checking. Kids who want WhatsApp already have it.
___
Amazon Web Services owes tech company Kove $525M for violating its patent rights in data-storage technology, an Illinois federal jury ruled last week. The jury determined that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering technology that Kove said had become “essential” to the ability of Amazon's cloud computing arm to “store and retrieve massive amounts of data.” Amazon disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal.
___
Coupang, a Korean e-commerce marketplace, is raising its monthly membership fee for paid users by 58% to 7,890 won ($5.74), in a move to secure further capital amid growing challenges from Chinese rivals like Temu and AliExpress, which are building momentum in the country. The company currently has 14M paying members on its premium service, and it plans to use the additional revenue from the fee increase to expand its “rocket delivery” nationwide.
___
JD.com is offering up to $138M in cash incentives to boost video content on its platform. Qualified influencers who post videos reviewing products or conduct live-streaming sessions to promote and sell them can receive up to 30k yuan ($4,144 USD) as a weekly bonus and “more exposure” for their content. In 2023, 71.2% of Chinese consumers purchased goods when they watched short videos or live-streamed content, compared with 42.7% in 2022.
___
Amazon is also leaning into video, but this time in Poland, to challenge the country's online marketplace leader Allegro. Amazon, which entered the Polish market in 2021, plans to add more original Polish-language shows to the five it has launched on its Prime Video service since 2023, because the company knows that once its got a user on Prime Video, it's an easy segway to get them over to its e-commerce marketplace.
___
eBay is discontinuing Promoted Listings Express for auctions, which was first introduced in the US in 2021 as a way for sellers to promote their auction listings by paying to have their ad displayed to potential buyers. Now the company is abandoning that model in favor of a cost per sale model, which is more favorable to sellers than paying a flat upfront fee for advertising, regardless of whether or not the item sold.
___
Allbirds, the San Francisco-based eco-friendly shoe brand that was once the darling of the D2C industry, received a non-compliance notice from Nasdaq after its share prices fell below $1 for 30 consecutive days. According to Nasdaq's rules, the company now has six months to regain compliance by having its common stock close at over $1 for 10 consecutive business days. The company, which closed its first day of trading valued at more than $4B in Nov 2021, has never turned a profit in its nine years of business.
___
It's rumored that Facebook will not be renewing Facebook Live deals with publishers and instead will be focusing on a new plan to push longer-form premium video content. Several publishers told Kurt Wagner of Recode that the social network is no longer emphasizing Facebook Live video during negotiations, and they do not expect the livestreaming deals they inked with Facebook last year to be renewed.
___
Shein more than doubled its profits last year, hitting a record of more than $2B in profits for 2023, while recording roughly $45B in GMV. Shein is currently awaiting regulators in Beijing and Washington to approve its listing, which is expected to be the largest IPO of the year that values the company at more than $60B.
___
ByteDance also crushed it last year, with its profit surging 60% in 2023, outpacing the growth of Tencent and Alibaba. ByteDance's earnings jumped to more than $40B last year from about $25B in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders that the company views generative AI as a key foundational element of delivering better customer experience and plans to deepen its investment in the technology. Jassy characterized generative AI as a building block that would serve as a foundation for new products and services, and also described the technology as possibly “the largest technology transformation since the cloud.”
___
Amazon and Walmart use over-the-top surveillance in their warehouses, which undermines the rights of employees and puts their health and well-being in jeopardy, according to a report released by Oxfam, an international anti-poverty organization, which collected data from 1,484 Amazon and 444 Walmart warehouse workers across the U.S. Oxfam's report quotes several unidentified warehouse workers describing harsh labor conditions, including one Amazon worker who likened their experiences on the warehouse floor to “slavery.” Amazon disputed claims that it uses technology to monitor its warehouse workers, and Walmart said the report fails to accurately depict its use of technology.
___
Squarespace launched its first campaign for Australia & New Zealand about a boat captain who creates a modern business idea called “Hitch on the Ditch” where he marries Aussies and Kiwis who can't choose which country to have the ceremony in. Australia is currently one of the company's fastest-growing markets.
___
Google agreed to destroy $5B worth of user data illegally collected when users browsed the web in Incognito Mode. For years, Google informed Chrome users that “you've gone Incognito” and “now you can browse privately,” when the supposedly untraceable browsing option was turned on, but in reality, while no activity was saved to the users' own devices, other companies including Google, ISPs, and website hosts were still tracking and monitoring their online activity the whole time. As the suit was pending, Google changed the splash screen of incognito mode to be more transparent about what was really going on behind the scenes.
___
56% of people who use BNPL encountered at least one problem while using the service — including overspending (29%), missing a payment (18%), and difficulty returning products or getting a refund (18%) — according to a Bankrate and YouGov survey of 2,276 U.S. adults. The report also found that the top used BNPL services were PayPal (16%), Affirm (12%), Afterpay (12%), and Klarna (11%).
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Automattic's acquisition of Beeper, a universal messaging app that combines 14 chat networks into one inbox.
___
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
For more details on each story and sources, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/youtube-shopping-wix-donations-tiktok-notes/
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
-PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter
PS: Want the full editions delivered to your Inbox each week? Join free at www.shopifreaks.com

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
STAT OF THE WEEK: Stripe surpassed $1 trillion in total payment volume last year. This insanely large number represents approximately 1% of the entire world's GDP.
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YouTube introduced several new shopping features to serve merchants and affiliates who create videos on their platform including Shopping Collections (curated storefronts for your profile), New Affiliate Hub (to find brands and products to feature), the ability to tag products across multiple videos, and an integration with Fourthwall shop. These new features will help YouTube catch up to TikTok when it comes to offering a streamlined storefront and affiliate program within the platform.
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Wix launched a new funding raising solution called Wix Donations to help non-profits and individuals run donation campaigns easily through their Wix websites. Now users will no longer need to employ third-party services to handle one-time or recurring donations. The move will put Wix in direct competition with sites like Funraise, OneCause, GiveButter, GoFundMe, and countless other donation enablement platforms. Wix's big advantage is that it's not just a donations platform. It also brings its other marketing tools into the equation for non-profits.
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eBay wants to help you dress better through the launch of its new generative AI-powered feature called “Shop The Look.” The feature suggests a carousel of images and ideas, based on your shopping history, to introduce other fashion items that may complement your current wardrobe. Shop the Look includes interactive hotspots that reveal similar items and outfit inspirations when tapped. The shopping results include both pre-owned and new items that match the user's personal style.
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TikTok's upcoming Instagram competitor app for sharing photos will likely be named TikTok Notes for some reason — a name that sounds more like a Google Keep competitor than an Instagram killer. TikTok users have been getting pop-up notifications over the past few days about a new TikTok Notes app to share photos. The notification says that TikTok is soon launching a “new app for photo posts” called TikTok Notes, and that users' existing photo posts will be shared on the app unless they opt-out.
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Chip winter is coming! Every big tech player is getting in on the chip war to seek control of the AI Throne. Last week Google partnered with Arm to make more of its own chips, announcing its new CPU named Axion which is set to be available for Cloud services later this year. Google says the chip will improve performance for “general-purpose workloads” such as open-source databases, web and app services, in-memory caches, data analytics engines, media processing — and of course, AI training.
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Meanwhile Meta just announced that its next generation of custom AI chips will be more powerful and able to train its ranking models much faster. The Meta Training and Interference Accelerator (MTIA) is designed to work best with Meta's ranking and recommendation models with the goal of eventually expanding the chip’s capabilities to begin training generative AI like its Llama language models. Beyond building the chips and hardware, Meta has made significant investments in developing the software necessary to harness the power of its infrastructure in the most efficient way.
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Last week, X began automatically changing “twitter.com” to “x.com” in links, but did so in the absolute worst way possible. The automatic text replacement was unintentionally applied to any URL ending in “twitter.com” even if it wasn't actually a Twitter link! The change went live on X's app for iOS, but not on the Android app or web version, and remained a problem for a couple days before the company fixed the issue so that it wouldn't affect non-Twitter.com domains.
___
But hey — changing domains from one URL to another is difficult. Just ask WooCommerce, which recently moved its domain from Woo.com back to WooCommerce.com after facing SEO challenges. The company wrote in a blog post, “Moving to Woo.com created challenges for our users to find WooCommerce in Google searches, which were made worse following Google’s March update. To address those challenges, we assembled a group of SEO experts and consultants to evaluate the best way to build on the strength of the WooCommerce brand. We collectively believe that reverting back to WooCommerce.com will deliver the best outcomes for WooCommerce and the wider Woo community.”
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Amazon's search results have become less self-preferential, according to research from a University of Minnesota economist who analyzed over 8 million Amazon search listings across 22 Amazon domains between June 2023 and Mar 2024. In a paper titled “Amazon Self-preferencing in the Shadow of the Digital Markets Act,” Joel Waldfogel, professor of applied economics, concluded that after the EU's designation of Amazon as a gatekeeper, the rank of their own products changed substantially, falling from a 30 to a 20 rank advantage, while other brands' search ranks did not change. Amazon says it does not give preference to its own products within its search results, and it never has. Last month it published a compliance report that describes how the company has responded to the DMA, maintaining that its ranking processes are unbiased and compliant with Article 6(5) of the DMA, which forbids self-preferencing.
___
Swiggy, an India food delivery app, is under heat for taking away health insurance from riders when they need it most. Swiggy rates its riders — bronze, silver, gold — depending on how many deliveries and points they earn each week. The top tier, gold, includes company-sponsored health insurance. The problem with this system? It recalculates weekly! So what ends up happening is that a rider reaches “gold” status, which makes them eligible for health insurance, but then if they get sick or injured and subsequently stop working, they lose their gold status the following week, and thus lose their health insurance.
___
OpenAI shared that Klarna's adoption of its technology is estimated to yield the company a $40M improvement in profits this year. OpenAI's chatbot now field two-thirds of Klarna's customer service chats, which used to require 700 full-time contracted employees.
___
Best Buy must have been paying attention because the company announced that it too plans on incorporating AI into customer support, working with Google Cloud and Accenture. Best Buy detailed the new strategy within days of reported layoffs that impacted its Geek Squad customer support operations.
___
Shopify will be hosting an exhibit at Retail Technology Show for the first time ever, which will take place at London's Olympia on the 24th and 25th of April. Shopify will be taking the opportunity to demo its latest enterprise and retail solutions on stand 5B60.
___
OpenAI hired former Shopify executive Glen Worthington, who previously worked as VP of global support at Shopify, to lead product and customer support. Under Worthington's leadership, Shopify embarked on a plan to put AI at the center of its work with merchants, and now he will lead User Operations at OpenAI to ensure that companies using its products have a good experience.
___
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is looking to improve Britain's “highly concentrated” consumer credit ratings market, which it says is currently not serving consumers well. Much like in the States, the consumer credit ratings market is dominated by Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion within the country, and the FCA feels that the lack of competition within the sector necessitates immediate action. I mean, it's not exactly a new triopoly that formed overnight, so I'm curious what the urgency is, but either way, I support reform in this space.
___
Meta lowered the minimum age for WhatsApp users from 16 to 13 in the UK and EU, which the company says puts the age limit in line with that in the majority of countries. The campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood said the move “flies in the face of the growing national demand for big tech to do more to protect our children.” I say that the move is inconsequential, given that Meta has no real guardrails in place to verify the ages of users who sign up. They might as well make the minimum age 3 years old, as no-one's checking. Kids who want WhatsApp already have it.
___
Amazon Web Services owes tech company Kove $525M for violating its patent rights in data-storage technology, an Illinois federal jury ruled last week. The jury determined that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering technology that Kove said had become “essential” to the ability of Amazon's cloud computing arm to “store and retrieve massive amounts of data.” Amazon disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal.
___
Coupang, a Korean e-commerce marketplace, is raising its monthly membership fee for paid users by 58% to 7,890 won ($5.74), in a move to secure further capital amid growing challenges from Chinese rivals like Temu and AliExpress, which are building momentum in the country. The company currently has 14M paying members on its premium service, and it plans to use the additional revenue from the fee increase to expand its “rocket delivery” nationwide.
___
JD.com is offering up to $138M in cash incentives to boost video content on its platform. Qualified influencers who post videos reviewing products or conduct live-streaming sessions to promote and sell them can receive up to 30k yuan ($4,144 USD) as a weekly bonus and “more exposure” for their content. In 2023, 71.2% of Chinese consumers purchased goods when they watched short videos or live-streamed content, compared with 42.7% in 2022.
___
Amazon is also leaning into video, but this time in Poland, to challenge the country's online marketplace leader Allegro. Amazon, which entered the Polish market in 2021, plans to add more original Polish-language shows to the five it has launched on its Prime Video service since 2023, because the company knows that once its got a user on Prime Video, it's an easy segway to get them over to its e-commerce marketplace.
___
eBay is discontinuing Promoted Listings Express for auctions, which was first introduced in the US in 2021 as a way for sellers to promote their auction listings by paying to have their ad displayed to potential buyers. Now the company is abandoning that model in favor of a cost per sale model, which is more favorable to sellers than paying a flat upfront fee for advertising, regardless of whether or not the item sold.
___
Allbirds, the San Francisco-based eco-friendly shoe brand that was once the darling of the D2C industry, received a non-compliance notice from Nasdaq after its share prices fell below $1 for 30 consecutive days. According to Nasdaq's rules, the company now has six months to regain compliance by having its common stock close at over $1 for 10 consecutive business days. The company, which closed its first day of trading valued at more than $4B in Nov 2021, has never turned a profit in its nine years of business.
___
It's rumored that Facebook will not be renewing Facebook Live deals with publishers and instead will be focusing on a new plan to push longer-form premium video content. Several publishers told Kurt Wagner of Recode that the social network is no longer emphasizing Facebook Live video during negotiations, and they do not expect the livestreaming deals they inked with Facebook last year to be renewed.
___
Shein more than doubled its profits last year, hitting a record of more than $2B in profits for 2023, while recording roughly $45B in GMV. Shein is currently awaiting regulators in Beijing and Washington to approve its listing, which is expected to be the largest IPO of the year that values the company at more than $60B.
___
ByteDance also crushed it last year, with its profit surging 60% in 2023, outpacing the growth of Tencent and Alibaba. ByteDance's earnings jumped to more than $40B last year from about $25B in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders that the company views generative AI as a key foundational element of delivering better customer experience and plans to deepen its investment in the technology. Jassy characterized generative AI as a building block that would serve as a foundation for new products and services, and also described the technology as possibly “the largest technology transformation since the cloud.”
___
Amazon and Walmart use over-the-top surveillance in their warehouses, which undermines the rights of employees and puts their health and well-being in jeopardy, according to a report released by Oxfam, an international anti-poverty organization, which collected data from 1,484 Amazon and 444 Walmart warehouse workers across the U.S. Oxfam's report quotes several unidentified warehouse workers describing harsh labor conditions, including one Amazon worker who likened their experiences on the warehouse floor to “slavery.” Amazon disputed claims that it uses technology to monitor its warehouse workers, and Walmart said the report fails to accurately depict its use of technology.
___
Squarespace launched its first campaign for Australia & New Zealand about a boat captain who creates a modern business idea called “Hitch on the Ditch” where he marries Aussies and Kiwis who can't choose which country to have the ceremony in. Australia is currently one of the company's fastest-growing markets.
___
Google agreed to destroy $5B worth of user data illegally collected when users browsed the web in Incognito Mode. For years, Google informed Chrome users that “you've gone Incognito” and “now you can browse privately,” when the supposedly untraceable browsing option was turned on, but in reality, while no activity was saved to the users' own devices, other companies including Google, ISPs, and website hosts were still tracking and monitoring their online activity the whole time. As the suit was pending, Google changed the splash screen of incognito mode to be more transparent about what was really going on behind the scenes.
___
56% of people who use BNPL encountered at least one problem while using the service — including overspending (29%), missing a payment (18%), and difficulty returning products or getting a refund (18%) — according to a Bankrate and YouGov survey of 2,276 U.S. adults. The report also found that the top used BNPL services were PayPal (16%), Affirm (12%), Afterpay (12%), and Klarna (11%).
Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Automattic's acquisition of Beeper, a universal messaging app that combines 14 chat networks into one inbox.
___
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
PAUL
Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter
PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hello everyone,
I would like to ask for some help. Last week I wanted to apply for a credit card with a local credit union but I didn't want them to pull from Experian since I already had a pull there so, I placed a security freeze on my Experian credit report and left my Transunion and Equifax credit unfrozen. I received an e-mail from Experian at 1:40 PM (EST) saying that the freeze was placed successfully. I checked on my Experian online account to confirm that it was frozen and it was.
After that I applied for the credit card on the credit union. The confirmation page said that they pulled my credit and that I had to wait for a decision. Completely normal.
Surprise! At 1:47 pm I got an e-mail from Experian saying that a credit inquiry was made. I logged in and there it was, a hard inquiry from the credit union even though I received a confirmation from Experian saying that it was frozen.
I called Experian to make a claim because the whole point of the security freeze is to prevent anyone from doing a hard inquiry. The first representative agreed with me and then transferred me to a dispute representative but this second agent refused and said that I had to contact the credit union and ask them to remove it, which they obviously won't since they didn't do anything wrong or illegal.
I'm pissed because Experian claims that their system "doesn't have timestamps" for the credit freeze. They claim they just see a freeze and an inquiry happened on the same day and think that I made the inquiry and then I placed the freeze. I told them I had the e-mails as proof and also when I log into my Experian account, you can see in the bell icon (alerts/notification history) that there is a notification for the freeze and then above it (sorted from newest to oldest), there's a notification for the inquiry, but they just kept saying they don't have timestamps which is a ridiculous excuse to be honest. I'm sure they do. They just don't care.
Has this ever happened to anyone here? Is there anything I can do about it?

I'm getting frustrated with Amex and starting to think I'm blacklisted or something. I've been applying to the BCE, Gold, and Cash Magnet cards for the last two years (with 2-3 months between apps) and getting the same generic denial letter every time.
"You have too many new bank card accounts"
I want an Amex card for the generous credit limit and Amex offers.
I am:
0/6, 1/12, 2/24
Trans union/Equifax 795
Experian 777
Credit accounts 6
Oldest age 4yr
Avg age 2yr 3mo
Income $95,000
Never carry a balance and never miss payments. What could possibly be preventing me from getting an Amex card?
Update: I called the reconsideration line and they just stated the same “you have too many new bank cards”. I told the representative my situation and she just gave the basic “based on your income that is what the system says”. She went on to say wait for 30 days and try applying again there is no option for a manual review this time.
Still frustrated as I feel as though my credit profile is satisfactory for at least one of their cards.

I try to understand what the work number (Equifax-talx) is. Is this a kind of creditor as well as an employee verification site? I got a blocked inquiry from them (luckily I froze my credit, so they couldn’t do a hard pull inquiry on me). I called them and the representative had no idea. I am in the process of freezing the work number account, but not sure of the consequences from freezing it.

I had my identity stolen a few years ago and have frozen all my 3 major credit bureaus. I signed up for Aura, which sent me a notification this AM that Equifax has blocked a new credit inquiry because I have frozen my credit report with Equifax.
But what puzzles me is the company that the requested the credit inquiry is the Equifax-talx (which I thought it is part of the equifax itself). I checked my credit report and only found soft inquiry from equifax customer service that was placed today. There is no new hard inquiry from all 3 major bureaus.
But from what I understand, equifax freeze doesn’t block soft inquiry. Why did I get a notification that there was a block?
I called equifax and the representative cannot give more information than what I got.
I wonder anyone has similar experience. And what would be the next step I should take to be proactive? I guess I’m safe now but I still can’t get rid of the unnerving feeling.

Back story:
- I've recently moved to the US (about 5 months ago) to work for a company in the SF Bay Area;- Since I had no credit history, a lot of important expenses demanded that I pay cash or pay deposits upfront;- Not only that, but prior to moving I was not working for about 6 months, so not working + moving to a different country consumed almost all of my cash reserve;- The company provided some moving allowance, but it taxed 40%;- Due to my Visa rules, my wife is not allowed to work, so I'm the sole income of the house.
Debt and credit score:- I was able to lease a car within my first month using just my employment offer letter and my lease agreement. All payments so far have been made on time (6 payments);- After a couple of months in the country, in I was able to get $1,000 of financing at a furniture store, which required full payment within 90 days to avoid interests kicking in. All payments were made either on or before the due date and I was even able to finish paying for it in full before the 90 days. This and the car lease were the only loans I had.- Just recently my credit scores started showing up around the mid-600s in Credit Karma. Seemed like a decent number and I was happy about it.
**Situation:**So, a few weeks ago, we decided to get a couple of cameras and a thermostat for our place from Google and, to my surprise, they offered an installment payment option. Because I'm trying to rebuild my cash reserves, I decided to apply for a monthly payment plan and was approved for a $600 limit. The limit works like a credit card, but I didn't think it would matter. We ended up spending about $560 and I was pretty happy to be able to pay it in 12 months.
A couple of weeks go by and I see my credit scores drop an astounding 100 points! To my surprise, by using more than 90% of my Google credit limit, the credit agencies (Equifax and TransUnion) decided to drop my scores considerably. I would understand if I was making late payments on the balance, or if maybe the $600 represented a large chunk of my monthly income, but the first payment is not even due until March 20th and I net more than 15x the total loan per month. Yet, none of these factors are taken that into consideration when calculating scores!
I tried signing up for TransUnion or Equifax to see if I could provide documentation to prove my ability to pay back the loan and improve my scores, but guess what? You need to pay $30 a month each, just for signing up to their platforms. Seems to me like one giant institutionalized scam, where agencies will bad-mouth you out there and then charge you a fee to clear your name. It's unbelievable! Back in my country agencies cannot drop your score if you don't have late payment and by law they need to provide at least 2 weeks notice.
I'm weighting my options and would like some suggestions in how I can revert the situation: - Should I just pay off the whole thing and be done with it? If I do that, how long until scores go back to normal? - I thought about signing up to these platforms and providing proof of good payments, but I'm not even sure if that's a thing... - How else can I show documentation that prove my good payments to get my scores up, without having to spend money to do it?
And please, if you don't have anything constructive to say, refrain from replying.
Thank you!

Below are some of the stories we’ve been reporting this week on Cyber Security Headlines.
If you’d like to watch and participate in a discussion about them, the CISO Series does a live 20-minute show every Friday at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET. Each week we welcome a different cyber practitioner to offer some color to the week's stories. Our guest this week is Russ Ayres, SVP of Cyber & Deputy CISO, Equifax .
To get involved you can watch live and participate in the discussion on YouTube Live https://youtube.com/live/2uvKNPfs-r0 or you can subscribe to the Cyber Security Headlines podcast and get it into your feed.
Here are the stories we plan to cover, time permitting:
GenAI Drives 1,760% Surge in Business Email Compromise Attacks This number comes from a report published yesterday by PerceptionPoint in their 2024 Annual Report: Cybersecurity Trends & Insights. GenAI has fueled this growth in BEC attacks, by helping create well-crafted and targeted social engineering-based attacks that are difficult. The report states that whereas BEC attacks accounted for only 1% of all cyberattacks in 2022, their proportion of the total rose to 18.6% of all attacks in 2023. Additional points in the report include an increase in evasive tactics such as quishing (QR code phishing) two-step phishing that bypasses traditional security systems account takeover attacks and impersonation attacks. A link to the report is available in the show notes to this episode. (PerceptionPoint)
Vending machine crash reveals face recognition tech Students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada are demanding answers after discovering that a M&Ms-branded smart vending machine had been apparently collecting facial recognition data. The discovery was made when the vending machine crashed and an error message on its screen stated, “Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe” had failed to launch. According to Wired, one student noted that “Invenda sales brochures promised [that] the machines are capable of sending estimated ages and genders of every person who used the machines—without ever requesting consent.” The company responsible for installing and maintaining the vending machines on campus stated that the machines do not store photos, are not capable of facial recognition and are GDPR compliant. They add the technology “acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the purchasing interface.” (Wired)
NIST releases cybersecurity framework 2.0 A decade in the making, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released their updated framework for the first time since 2014. The agency says the framework now aims to help all organizations—not just those in critical infrastructure—manage and reduce risk. There is a large emphasis on the guidance helping all organizations meet their cybersecurity goals with additional resources. For those familiar with the original five core functions of the framework—identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover—you will notice the new addition of ‘govern’ to the group, with the purpose of broadening a security framework throughout the entire organization. (The Register), (NIST)
SolarWinds attackers changing tactics Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and other Five Eyes alliance members published an alert detailing new attack methods from this Russian SVR linked group. This sees the group focusing on stealing system-issued access tokens from compromised personal devices. These devices often connect to corporate resources, opening the door to further cloud-based platforms. Once accessing a cloud platform, the attackers register their own devices as legitimate to gain persistence. The NCSC also published mitigations for this approach, urging all organizations to familiarize themselves. (The Record)
OpenAI vs. the New York Times The New York Times copyright lawsuit against OpenAI is up for contention as the artificial-intelligence company says the newspaper “hacked” ChatGPT to create misleading evidence. According to Reuters, The Times first sued OpenAI in December, accusing them of using millions of articles and near-verbatim excerpts without the newspaper’s permission. In OpenAI’s recent filing, they claim the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products which caused the chatbot to reproduce copyrighted work using deceptive prompts. To further point fingers, a representative from the Times responded by saying this so-called hacking is actually the organization looking for evidence. (Reuters)
Biden signs order limiting the sale of personal data This executive order limits mass-scale sales of American citizens’ data by data brokers “countries of concern,” such as China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia. Data covered by the order includes geolocation, genomic, financial, biometric, health, and PII. A Biden administration spokesperson framed this order as a matter of national security. The order does not address sales of American PII to other countries. The Justice Department said the executive order requires due diligence by data brokers to vet their customers, operating similar to sanctions. (Engadget)
German applied sciences university suffers cyberattack Another in a series of cyberattacks on German and Swiss schools, the Hochschule Kempten, a university of applied sciences in the city of Kempten in Germany, has had to take down its IT infrastructure, despite what it calls very high security precautions. The school cannot be accessed via email and other online portals have student portals have been shuttered. Classes remain ongoing and communications are being done via telephone. Representatives of the school do not have a current estimated time for restoration, nor has any group yet claimed responsibility. (The Record)
Department of Commerce assesses Chinese vehicle threat In response to a concern that “connected vehicles from China could collect sensitive data about our citizens and our infrastructure and send this data back to the People’s Republic of China…[and that] these vehicles could be remotely accessed or disabled,” President Joe Biden has announced actions to investigate how these cars could affect national security.” The announcement follows the executive order regarding sales of datasets that we reported on yesterday but is seen as complementary but distinct for that order. Instead, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will issue an advanced notice of public rulemaking seeking public comments as it considers implementation. (Cyberscoop)
Popular video doorbell easy hijacked According to Consumer Reports, Chinese manufactured smart doorbells, currently being sold through retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, and Sears, are proving to be loaded with security flaws that allow anyone to hack them and permanently access images and audio. The flaws include exposing owners’ public-facing IP address and Wi-Fi network in plaintext. All that is needed is the serial number of the camera which can be obtained by pressing the doorbell button for eight seconds, and then re-pairing the camera to a smartphone app. The cameras are sold by the Chinese company Eken under the brand names Aiwit, Andoe, Eken, Fishbot, Gemee, Luckwolf, Rakeblue and Tuck. A link to the Consumer Reports report is available in the show notes to this episode. (Consumer Reports)

Today I received an unsolicited debit card in the mail from a bank I have never banked with or had any loans or any relationship with at all. It had my correct address and name (mostly - see end) on the letter and my name is on the card. It claims to be a replacement card. Am I correct in thinking that this is evidence of identity theft and potentially much worse things happening? As for what I have done so far...
I have run my equifax report and there are no accounts there that shouldn't be and I am waiting on the identity verification service to be back up to run the trans union, as I understand they can be different. But there are a couple of soft checks that shouldn't be there. One from 2022 and one from last year. One is from a third party verification service that I have no way of knowing who they did the check for, but I went back in my records and there is nothing around that time that I authorized. One is from a bank, different from this one, but that I also have no account or relationship with, past or present. So that's alarming, right?
Looking online, I have seen that attempting to resolve this by phone gets nowhere, so I intend to go into a branch tomorrow and demand that they produce copies of the documents and ID used to open this account, close the account and any others under my name, and block any further accounts from being opened. I then intend to go to the police station and file a fraud report (not that I think that they will get anywhere with that).
Am I correct in assuming that a police report will allow me to place a fraud alert on my credit report (presumbly I have to call them or mail them some sort of letter as equifax did not seem to have this option online)? Does anyone know how to do that? Is there anything else I should do?
One thing I do know is likely is that the bank probably violated the know your customer rules and that whoever did the fraud doesn't have a copy of my actual ID. If they did, my complete name would be on what I received and it isn't. There is one thing missing. And it is on my ID and other legal documents.
So, thoughts?
UPDATE:
I went to the bank first thing and spoke with the manager. They provided me with what information they had about the account and the phone number to report the fraud without much hesitation. I went to the police station and reported the fraud there as well. The consensus seems to be that based on the documents that are/aren't there, the account was probably opened online rather than in a branch. I won't go into full details, but I am highly compromised, it's not good. I've also made a report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
I called both TransUnion and Equifax since both websites are just trash and wouldn't work properly for me and had them put fraud alerts on my reports. I had the representative at TransUnion read my report to me (since I could not access it myself due to their website shitting the bed) and it looks like there's nothing on there that shouldn't be yet either, so I'm still moving ahead of things.
I'm going to have to get credit monitoring, I guess, probably forever. And I have no way of knowing how this happened. From what I found out, none of the breaches I know about could have caused this based on what info was compromised and when they happened. So that's also very concerning.
This has been exceedingly stressful.

TL;DR: Denied membership multiple times possibly due to using foreign e-mail. Application completed onced changed to US e-mail.
Original Post:
I provided all the required documents to open a savings account and was denied membership although I am retired military and meet elgibility. The irony is that because of my military affiliation my wife was able to open up a checking and savings account. I have nearly perfect credit score and manage my financials very well.
Anyone else has run into this problem? Just found it odd.
Update 15 Feb 24 1500: It looks like I have potentially been a victim of identity theft and being used for nefarious purposes.
Update 23 Mar 24: I reviewed all three credit reporting agency (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) and no issues found. It even said no fraud detected. Additionally, I requested a report from Chex system, EWS, and Telecheck and no issues found. No evidence of identity theft. I did see NFCU checking these reports being indicated on some. Submitted an appeal to NFCU and has been over 15 days with no response. I just don't undstand what they found to denied me.
Update 6 April 24: I got an e-mail from Navy Federal Credit Union Appeal stating to "Please resubmit your application, ensuring that all required information is provided and accurate. Applications for membership can be completed by visiting www.NavyFederal.org, by visiting a branch, or you may call us toll-free anytime at 1-888-842-6328."
I went today, to resubmit for membership and got flagged again. The bank representative at the local brancch states that they (Higher branch) will not tell her what is wrong and I have to come back on Monday. This is getting really stupid.
Update 18 April 24: Called 11 April 24 about being denied again and was told it was an error and I should expect a welcome letter next week. Well It is next week and I got a denied letter stating that I could appeal their decision again. I provided my military id, passport and drivers license and multiple proof of address bases on their example list. If they can’t identify me with all that information, how am I going to trust them with my money and business?
Update 26 April 24: After working with NavyFederalHelp on twitter (X), they were able to correct the error and I finally was able to get a membership. Apparently, their security check system does not like foreign e-mails. I used GMX e-mail which I believe it's servers are stored in Germany. Once I changed to my outlook e-mail, I could continue with my application process.