jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (02/22/91)
In article <1991Feb21.154633.20781@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>, jkonrath@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (jon) writes: |> ok, maybe this isnt a good question for here, but im sure maybe one |> of you knows what im talking about... This has been discussed before in misc.consumers, and misc.consumers is probably a much better newsgroup to discuss it, so I've directed followups there. |> in a lot of these tabloid magazines you see ads like: |> |> 'fix your credit history! send xx dollars to...' |> |> im just wondering what 'fixing' entails and if anyone knows how to |> do this. it seems like any pud off the street who can put an ad in |> the enquirer can do this, so why can't i? There are two main approaches they take (that I know of). One of them is to issue you a debit credit card. A debit card is a card where you deposit a starting balance in a bank account at the bank issuing the card, and your credit limit is the amoung of money you deposit. If you don't pay, they take the money out of the account. The idea, supposedly, is that if you keep this account for a long time and manage to pay off the bills every month reliably, it will show up in your credit history. The other is much less legal. They access the records of a credit agency like TRW, searching for someone with the same name as you who has a better credit history. Then, they give you that person's social security number and tell you to use it whenever applying for credit from now on. You give your name and the other guy's social security number, and when they look up your history they see the other guy's. If you don't do anything obnoxious, the other guy probably won't ever notice; if you do, you just might get caught, and the company that told you to do this might too. -- Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710