[iav]

I am an investor in equifax. Let me clear up a misconception on where the data comes from. Half the data comes from large enterprise customers, who “sell” the data in exchange for Equifax doing I-9 verification for free. The other half comes from 39 payroll companies. Every single payroll company except for Rippling and Gusto sell paystub data to Euifax. (Rippling will start next year). Those are exclusive revenue share deals. You cannot be a competitive payroll provider without the revenue share from Equifax. So before you blame your employer, they might not be selling it directly and even if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it anyway.

[Arelius]

Do you have a sense of why, according to you Gusto will remain the only company that doesn't sell payroll data to Equifax?

[dawnerd]

Seems like something gusto can turn into a marketing point. Surely there’s a desire for a privacy respecting payroll/hr platform.

[nullish]

This may not be correct. My current company uses Gusto for payroll. Pulling my data, I see everything. I am confirming with Gusto support its sourced from them.

[jnwatson]

Gusto is still pre-revenue?

[maxwell]

Sounds like Gusto is the only acceptable option then. Thanks for the info!

[lxgr]

> even if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it anyway

Surely that can't be legal?

[archon810]

As a Gusto admin for my company and user for another (well, my wife is the user), I am happy with our choice of payroll provider.

[marssaxman]

That's good to know. The company I work for currently uses Rippling; I will mention this upcoming change and suggest that we should consider switching to Gusto.

[Libcat99]

I hate the argument of "you cannot be a competitive company without being a scumbag."

It's a bad argument through and through.

[randomdata]

Perhaps you would find it to be more palatable if it were phrased as: "You cannot be competitive as a company if you do not serve the wants and needs of the customer."?

But, of course, that says the same thing. These companies are scumbags because that's how the customer wants them to behave. In this case, because it makes executing payroll cheaper for the customer, which is a highly desirable trait to the customer.

[hammock]

Can I opt out thru the payroll company?

[flatpepsi17]

No, but you can opt out at the Aggregator level. Currently, The Work Number is the largest salary aggregator, you may find this link, helpful:

https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

[zo1]

Maybe I'm missing something... If the data doesn't come from the employer, then how does the "payroll" company get it?

[jacobr1]

It is indirect instead. The employer tells the payroll company: pay employee $x (and handle deductions, retirement contributes etc ...) The payroll company then has this data and can resell it. I would expect the contract the employer has with the payroll company explicitly allows for the data sharing.

[dsr_]

You make an excellent argument here for tight regulation of the industry.

[Kon-Peki]

… and the usage?

Most highly-paid people have no idea how much privilege this affords them.

You wonder why so many businesses are nice to you? It’s because they’ve already looked you up and know you’ve got a high income and are a millionaire.

Write a personal check for your next automobile? Sure thing, you can drive it off the lot a few minutes later. They won’t even bother cashing the check for a week or two.

Try doing something like that as an hourly worker, even if you’ve got the money in the bank.