If you’ve used Check into Cash in Champaign, IL you might have a serious problem. The payday lender has been leaving customer’s personal information including Social Security numbers, addresses, photocopies of driver’s licenses and other personal information out on the street for anyone to find. Luckily, that someone was a newspaper. From the News-Gazette:
Wow. That’s something,” said Roberta Hazen, who with her husband, Roger, has taken out payday loans from Check into Cash. “Why did they just dump it? Nowadays you should shred everything before you throw it out. They should have been more cautious,” she said.
As if you needed another reason not to get a payday loan… —MEGHANN MARCO
Papers with personal info found in Check into Cash’s trash [News-Gazette]
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LOL. Those crummy “Check into Cash!” commercials used to drive me nuts when I lived in Champaign. I almost had to use a payday loan once (I was in college and very broke), but my dad convinced me to avoid those guys like the plague. They’re predators who take advantage of poor people who don’t know any better.
His contention was that you can tell how bad a neighborhood is by how many title loans / payday loans places you see in a mile-long stretch. One or two, the neighborhood’s in a decline; three or more, you might want to lock your doors and roll up your windows. I guess there’s lots of money to be made in impoverished areas, because those places seem to spring up like dandelions in old fast food restaurants and abandoned storefronts.
i guess these kinda places fill a need , but it’s a shame that people have to get hooked up with these hyeneas
The people who’s information was compromised ought to be able to get out of their obligations to the company. Didn’t Check into Cash break the contract by not keeping the information confidential?
Around here it isn’t payday loans but title pawns. Those commercials are so annoying: “Get your money, your money, the REAL money! Haha!”
As opposed to fake money?
Is this surprising? They don’t give a damn about bleeding you dry, why would they care if your identity gets stolen? Some of the places I’ve seen look like that’s what they do anyway…
Payday lending… talk about a predatory service…
When people who take out payday loans make good criticism of your business practices you’re probably doing something really wrong.
Isn’t writing something like this in a local newspaper doing harm as well as good? What if that store doesn’t “correct the mistakes”? Then every identity theif knows where the find LOTS of social security numbers, ID, blah, blah, blah.
Although, now that I think about it, if their stealing the identity of someone who’s using payday loans the theives probably won’t get much use out of them… but still.
Sure they should protect data — but who is going to prey on a payday customer?
@Secularsage: When I saw the picture, I knew it looked familiar. I used to hate those commercials as well. I wonder if any college students there try to scam the lenders, I’m sure it could be done…and knowing what we did there, I’m surprised we never thought of this back then.
@Hossofcourse: Until the sub-prime lending market gets a real clue about changes they need to make in order to prevent losses, as far as I know, they are still handing out money today. It’s gotten tougher, but the market is still there. Sub-prime borrowers are a prime target because they are less likely to be watching their credit closely (knowing that they already have sub-prime credit) and so a fraudulent account is more likely to slip by the radar and not get caught as quickly.
Around here we have Cash Call being pimped by Gary Coleman (what you talkin’ ’bout Willis?” Just call some 800 number and get the funds sent right to your account! I hate those commercials because I know they’re charging outrageous fees/interest rates on the loans.
@humphrmi: These are relatively small payday loans mostly to folks that wouldn’t even meet subprime standards for auto loans, mortgage, credit cards, etc. How do we victimize someone with no credit avaiable?
@Secularsage:
I’d say mushrooms, since they’re saprotrophic.
@Hossofcourse:
The fact that payday loan users’ identities won’t tend to be economically exploitable doesn’t mean they aren’t exploitable.
Criminal Identity Theft
I daresay a false criminal conviction on one’s record would screw up one’s life more than fraudulant credit accounts opened in one’s name.
@JesusOnAPogoStick: There is value in a valid US citizen’s Social Security number and name. Alot of people here illegally need info they can give to an employer which checks out. A valod SSN is worth a good chunk of change, no matter how broke the name attached to it is.
There are other uses too, like money laundering and using it to elude law enforcement.
These people have nothing to worry about. If they’re desperate and/or stupid enough to take out payday loans, chances are they don’t have good enough credit to be ruined by identity theft.
@huadpe: That’s true. I didn’t think about that aspect.
It says “confidential,” this could be worth $54 million for consumer fraud…