BILL NUMBER:  S6820A

 TITLE OF BILL :  An act to amend the general business law and the
banking law, in relation to prohibiting a consumer reporting agency or
lender from using an individual's internet viewing history to
determine such individual's credit worthiness

 PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF THE BILL :

To prohibit a consumer reporting agency or lender from using an
individual's internet viewing history to determine such individual's
credit worthiness

 SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS :

Section 1. Section 380-j of the general business law is amended by
adding a new subdivision (h) to read as follows:

(h)No consumer reporting agency shall collect, evaluate, report, or
maintain in the file on a consumer the consumer's use of internet or
web browsing history as a factor to determine the consumer's credit
score, standing or credit capacity.

Section 2. Section 352 of the banking law is amended by adding a new
sixth undesignated paragraph to read as follows:

              

No licensee shall collect, evaluate, report or maintain in the file on
a borrower, the borrower's use of internet or internet viewing history
as a factor to determine the borrower's credit worthiness, credit
standing or credit capacity.

Section 3 contains the effective date.

 JUSTIFICATION :

Consumers in the United States continue to be under attack by the
fuzzy math used to calculate credit scores. The US General Accounting
Office has estimated that some 75% of credit scores are wrong based on
incorrect information collected by credit bureaus and attached to
individual credit scores.

As if this was not detrimental enough to the average consumer, credit
scores are used by employers to screen potential employees, by
landlords and even by graduate schools for students applying to
business majors. The errors on these reports and the fuzzy math used
to create the credit score are impacting every aspect of our lives.

To make matters worse, the FICO score, a measure of consumer credit
risk, which has become a fixture of consumer lending in the United
States, is moving to add consumer's social network as another variable
in the more than 100 variable equation used to compute a consumer's
credit score.

FICO is looking to lumping all of the individual consumers' Internet
viewing history into the consumer credit score. A value will be added
to the consumer's choice of websites viewed and that subjective value
will be used as a variable to derive a new credit score for individual
consumers. This is an obvious invasion of privacy and another fuzzy
math approach which will hurt consumers.

It is obvious that individuals in low income communities, immigrants
with limited English proficiency, teens and young adults will have an
online viewing history that is substantially different than those who
are native born, with higher incomes and older.


So why should consumers be further stigmatized and penalized via
worsening credit scores based on whether or not they read the New York
Times versus the NY Post or because they only play online games and
never visit the website of the Economist? FICO's attempt to do this
should be banned and this legislation does exactly that.

 PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY :

No prior legislative history.

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT :

None

 EFFECTIVE DATE :
Immediately.