CIFAS threatens Home Repossession Page
Some people don't have a sense of irony. Others have
it in spades.
But we're not too sure what to make of the reader who
included this gem in an email complaint he made to us
two days ago:
"It is outrageous that when I e-mailed this
site to alert you to some factual inaccuracies,
I end up as a named individual on the site.
You have caused distress and panic to me
and my family."
"Your internet service provider has
suggested I ask you to delete the reference.
Could you please do so and ensure you
never publish such details again without
permission. If you do not remove the
references to me, I shall be complaining to
the Data Protection Registrar's Office to
force the issue as the data (my name,
job and place of work) are personal
data you have gathered without my
consent to store or publish it."
The irony - if indeed it was meant to be
irony - is that the sender is the director of
an organisation that... gathers personal
data about people without their consent
to store or publish it." It then publishes it
and is open about the fact that it puts
what it calls "warnings" against the names of
people who have merely lived at an address
that it regards as once having been the home
of someone it suspected.
The organisation is, of course, CIFAS.You can read about some of our experiences with
CIFAS (Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System) at
http://www.home-repo.org. They are indexed in the section entitled Blacklisted?
They make interesting reading. One of the things
you'll notice is that CIFAS was none too willing
to respond to our attempts to find out what
information it was storing about repossessees. CIFAS
also publishes data about people without their consent.
It warns lenders if it thinks you should be flagged.
It claims that people should not get upset if they
find a CIFAS warning on their credit reference file.
To see why it says this, you should visit its web-site
at: http://www.cifas.org.uk/faq.htm and read the section entitled "How does CIFAS work?".
Here's our precis:
CIFAS puts a warning against the name of any person
linked to an address from which a potentially fraudulent
credit application originated. Nice if you have recently
moved into a new dream home. Or if you're young and live
in a shared house.
It's OK, says CIFAS, because its warnings only tell
lenders to investigate further. They are not allowed,
it adds, to refuse you credit just because it's put out a
warning against your name.
We're critical of CIFAS. But it undoubtedly does good
too and you should read its web-site.
In fact CIFAS has been criticising us since June.
We've highlighted one criticism on the site. Others
remain unpublished. You have the right to know what's
going on though, so we've included the director's latest
email below, along with a copy of our response.
We've also removed the director's name from our site,
as he requested.
His email to us:
"To: repossession @ bigfoot.com
From: cifas @ cifas.org.uk
Date: 01 September 1999 11:16
Message for Site Owner from 
(Censored following legal threats) -
Director of CIFAS
I am not happy about being named as
Director of CIFAS on your website.
My job involves identifying Organised Crime
and I am fairly certain that as a result of you
publishing my name, I have been tracked
down and as a result received threatening
telephone calls at home. I have had to
change my number as a result. It is
outrageous that when I e-mailed this site
to alert you to some factual inaccuracies,
I end up as a named individual on the site.
You have caused distress and panic to me
and my family."
"Your internet service provider has
suggested I ask you to delete the reference.
Could you please do so and ensure you
never publish such details again without
permission. If you do not remove the
references to me, I shall be complaining to
the Data Protection Registrar's Office to
force the issue as the data (my name,
job and place of work) are personal data
you have gathered without my consent to
store or publish it."
Our reply to him:
"To: cifas @ cifas.org.uk
From: repossession @ bigfoot.com
Date: 01 September 1999
I was very concerned to hear that you feel the
reference to you on the site has enabled harassers
to track you down. I will shortly remove your name
from the site. I will then check the veracity of
your claims and decide how to proceed depending on
the results of those checks.
Because this is such a very serious matter, I would
ni (sic) the meantime, appreciate your urgent
response to the following questions:
- Have you contacted BT and enabled their free
anti-harrassment service? Please give me the BT
reference number.
- Have you contacted the Police yet? As the allegation
is so very serious I suggest you do so or allow me
to do so on your behalf. I will need a case number
in order to finish all my checks and ensure that
neither of us waste Police time duplicating the crime
report.
I have run a quick check of the number of individuals
currently identifiable as (censored - it's the CIFAS
director's name) in the UK. I found 64 but suspect
there are more. I would be interested to hear your
thoughts on whether the harrassers rang all 64 in an
effort to trace you. If they did - and I presume they
had to, because we have not published your address or
any other identifying information other than your name
- then I would be grateful if you would pass it on to
me so that I can pass it on to the police and to BT.
Those calls to the other 63 (censored - CIFAS director's
name) will, of course, help BT track down the harrasser(s).
You will also be aware, I am sure, that your personal
details are publicly available through the Companies
House record of your directorship, provided that your
directorship has been brought to the attention of
Companies House.
I would encourage you complain to the DPA about the site
and its mention of your name. They will help clarify
whether the site has broken Data Protection Act laws
or not.
I will be in London between 6th and 9th September. Can
I suggest that we meet up and discuss this issue further,
in particular, the assurances you have sought from me. I
would also like to discuss my plans for future coverage
of CIFAS, as these are well advanced.
This allegation has highlighted several conflicts. I
feel a meeting will be beneficial to all concerned.
Regards,
Lee Kimber
ends emails
There is more we could say about this,
our response to it, and about how CIFAS
has treated people affected by its warnings.
But it would be discourteous of us to do
so until CIFAS's director has replied to the
email above.
Banks rip customers off
A Consumers Association survey of Britain's
finance industry claims our beloved and trustworthy
financial institutions reward their most loyal
customers by flogging them expensive products.
It names Barclays Bank as the worst - a finding
backed up by the readers' poll running on the
Home Repossession Page (see link below).
Some of its other results are completely
contrary to our poll, though not all of its
findings were about mortgages.
Consumers' Association coverage of the report
disappeared between the time we read it and
publication of this newsletter. However, the
BBC was still covering it at the time of writing.
It's at:
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/your_money/newsid_435000/435181.stm.
The Consumers' Association also has a lot to say
about NatWest, which has announced big profits. See the whole story at:
http://www.which.net/nonsub/pr/aug99/general/natwest.html.
Repossessed! Can I get another mortgage?
People facing mortgage difficulties often wonder if they can
get another mortgage before handing in their keys. This is
presumably because they think being repossessed will
prevent them from getting another mortgage. It's easy to
get another mortgage while being open about your problems
in the past. Try using the link to specialist brokers at
http://www.lee-k.dircon.co.uk/homebuyi/specialist.htm for
a quick way to contact many specialist brokers. There's an
example of the sort of question we see about this kind of
problem at
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001FPN.
A common question on the site's Q&A board is the one about
wives being pressured to sign mortgage agreements as
their partners seek extended or business loans. There's
a typical example at http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001GWh. There's another example at http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001FU4.
Anyone with any views on this is invited to comment.
We see this kind of question often enough that we
would all benefit from some answers.
Does anybody on this subscriber list know much about
the duties of a Building Society when it has completed
the sale of a repossessed house? We've hinted that
the law on this is more complex than it seems and
a reader has posted a question about the issue. If you
know the answer, we'd all appreciate it if you could
respond to his question. It's at
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001Bel
Changes to the site include:
An easier to read version of the graph that shows
what the public thinks of various lenders. It tries
to show how significant reader's criticism is in
relation to the amount of mortgages loaned by each
lender. This is based on the site's lender cricitism
poll. The new graph is available from the index.
The Site Map has been slightly updated.
Note that clicking on these links takes you into the
site without its frames. So when you click on any
other links, they will start up a new browser window.
If you want to get to the main page of the site, try
clicking on the "Home Page" link at the bottom left
of the page.
[ends]