EXCLUSIVE: Your employer may share your salary, and Equifax might sell that data
The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of human resource departments around the country, has assembled what may be the most powerful and thorough private database of Americans' personal information ever created, containing 190 million employment and salary records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults.
Some of the information in the little-known database, created through an Equifax-owned company called The Work Number, is sold to debt collectors, financial service companies and other entities.
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My household income has never been a secret: it has been available for over thirty years, to anyone with access to the Registry of Motor Vehicles database, a Zipcode directory, and some rudimentary statistical training.
I guess these reports have some value to those who think there's a difference between knowing my income bracket within about $5,000, or in knowing my income to the exact penny, but mostly, I think these sorts of stories are put out on slow news days in order to hype the stats for a particular paper or web page.
What I'd really like to see is a database that shows the incomes of every consultant, lobbyist, lawyer, and political advisor who deals with the local, state, and national governments of my country. *THAT* information would make me a better-prepared citizen when I go to the polls.
Bill Horne Moderator