BILL NUMBER: S8154

SPONSOR: KAVANAGH
 
TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the general business law and the bank-
ing law, in relation to prohibiting a consumer reporting agency or lend-
er from using an individual's internet viewing history to determine such
individual's credit worthiness

 
PURPOSE:

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

 
SUMMARY OF 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 incor-
rect 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 IOC 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 worsen-
ing 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:

2017: A3565 by Crespo: Referred to consumer affairs and protection
2016: A9145-A by Crespo: Referred to consumer affairs and protection

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT:

None

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.