I am disappointed by the auto opt-in to information sharing with credit bureaux

I’ve just received this email from Revolut:

Hi Croato,

We’d like to let you know about some updates we’re making to our privacy policy and cookies policy. The updates will go live on the 12th November 2019. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team through the in-app chat.

We’re updating our privacy policy to include information about how your personal data is shared with:

(i) credit bureaus, to help us better assess your financial circumstances (to opt out of sharing this data, please reach out to our support team via the in-app chat); and

(ii) social media and analytics companies, for marketing purposes (to opt out of sharing this data, please use the toggle under ‘Privacy’ in your dashboard settings). Make sure you update your Revolut app to version 6.15 through the App Store to be able to use the toggle.

Guys, this is not cool. You know full well that people mostly don’t read these emails. But even if they did, why did you make it harder to opt out of I) than out of II)? Why don’t they both have a toggle?

Now the important bit: even if you had emphasized the change more and made opting out easier, it would still be wrong to auto opt in people into sharing their information with third parties.

I see this as a sleight of hand from you. It’s disappointing. It means one can’t relax knowing you have our best interests in mind, but has to be careful and vigilant constantly or you’ll expose our information to who knows whom. Trust is all you have in this relationship, and you’re damaging it with moves like this.

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Croato,

You may be interested to read the discussion I started a week ago about ‘Updated Privacy Policy’

A lot of confusing answers about how to opt out of information sharing.

I find the Revolut policy of opting people in, unless they can fathom how to opt out very disturbing?

Who matters most existing customers or maximising selling customer information?

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I completely agree with you. Thanks for pointing out your thread. For reference, it’s here: Privacy Policy Updates

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I TOTALLY agree with every word you’ve written!

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What are credit bureaus?

Some agencies looking how you use your credit limit and how you pay back those credit (on time, with delay, payment failure). They give you a score, and based on that score they know if you can get higher credit limit or be safe for a mortgage.

More info there: https://www.consumer.equifax.ca/personal/education/credit-report/what-is-a-credit-bureau/

I guess it may bring credit card a step closer.

I’ve messaged in-app support to opt out of this new sharing.

Its not on, we have to proactively opt-out.

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Actually, in europe, it’s much worse:
credit agencys ESTIMATE your credit-worthiness, by analysing (in an intransparent way, different for each agency) where you live, if you’re male/female/whatever, and many more points. Having a morgage or credit or debts doesn’t realy affect the numbers, as these things aren’t reported to them (some countries have official registers, but the agencys don’t compare their data with them).

In Europe, credit agencys are a severe source for anger. Because they are known to f…k things up, giving people wrong scores, imagine debts the person doesn’t have, causing all kind of shi…t

Eg. in Switzerland: Intrum Justizia. Having the same Name as a guy who’s in debt, and you get visitors at your door who only leave when they got the money. CRIF, reporting repeatedly false informations as they don’t react to “ammend-requests” (you can’t delete your scores, only fix them, IF they do so); the official swiss register is mostly unknown for these two agencys.
In Germany, there’s the Schufa (a semi-official agency); also known for making severe mistakes in calculating scores (for me (I order oftern in germany), they invented 6 (six!) morgages on a house that doesn’t exist. (!!!). Took me almost a year to fix that shice!)

…and now imagine Revolut asking these amateurs for “is this guy trustworthy so we can give this 2year-customer of ours a new card” or something. WITHOUT ME KNOWING WHO THEY’RE ASKING, or fixing any wrong information they’ve received…

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Hi,
This is quite worrisome.
According to GDPR all clients have to be informed about the purpose of data collection. And the rules are much stricter let alone for the sharing the data with third parties. It cannot be done without direct consent given by the clients. So automatically opting-in everyone will definitely create problems for Revolut. I wonder why their legal services let this thing happen…

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Just got this in the support chat, Rita the Support bot:

It seems like you have contacted us to opt-out from sharing your personal data with credit bureaus due to the recent update in the Privacy Policy.

We will proceed with opting out within the next 24h.

If you do not want us to do so, simply respond to this message.

In the meantime, if you wish to opt out from sharing your data for the marketing purposes you can use the toggle under ‘Privacy’ in your dashboard settings.

This chat will be automatically closed, but if you’d like to get some help regarding any other topic - simply reply to this message.

Thank you!

So it seems it’s automated but still need to request it

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Mind if I ask the query you’ve enterd?
(for me, Rita is no help at all; probably due to bad english (she didn’t understand german, neither))

Query was

Opt-out to information sharing with credit bureaus and targeted marking

Hope that helps in your case, too.

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Be careful about the conclusion though :slight_smile:

I used the same query except for the fact that I mentioned only credit bureaus. I got the same reply.

I think they just parse for the words “opt out” and respond with the same reply if they find them.

So it is not clear whether opting out via chat opts you out from both things or just one.

I would guess that they intend the in app toggle for the Targeted Marketing and the chat for the Bureaus.

That is, you might still need to use the toggle, despite mentioning both things in the chat.

Regarding the opt out for targeted marketing: how is the English wording of this? In German, the title is somewhat in contradiction with the description:


Title: targeted marketing
Text start: objection to use the data…

So what is the correct setting? From the title I would put it to off as I don’t want this. From the text it suggests to enable it as I object the use of my data for direct marketing.

I would be interested as well in this answer…

I have not even updated to latest version yet due to this wtf with toggles.

According to what Rita the bot says, just one, the sharing with credit bureaus.

The other I have to do myself with in-app settings. Whether that will work and if I will need to talk to a support agent to get it done is a different story.

It is still confusing indeed. The text does not change with the selection, so I don’t know whether blue means opt-out or “I want targeted marketing”

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Deliberate obfuscation?

noun

  1. the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible.
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IMPORTANT - I WAS JUST TOLD:
Opt-out is gray (disable), blue is “opt in”. Apparently.
(god i love consistent informations)

Pls see the screenshot of it (agent was ok with me sharing this part, pls. disregard my typos. hard to type with my fingers on my cellphone):

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