I found this unsettling.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/opini...nd-government-act-opinion-schneier/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/opini...nd-government-act-opinion-schneier/index.html
News for him - all of them do it.I also don't have a Gmail account, because I don't want Google storing my email. But my guess is that it has about half of my email anyway, because so many people I correspond with have accounts. I can't even avoid it by choosing not to write to gmail.com addresses, because I have no way of knowing if newperson@company.com is hosted at Gmail.
In light of recent developments I have decided to freeze my credit. This essentially restricts access to your credit reports and makes it virtually impossible for someone who has access to your personal info to borrow money in your name as the borrower cannot get the info he needs. There is a small fee associated with this, but I think well worth it. Personally this is no big deal for me as I have not gone to a lender in years so why not freeze something I never use to further safeguard my finances.
The FTC has a nice FAQ about this and I have provided the link here.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs#what
IMHO everyone is looking at this issue wrong. The real burden of proof should be shouldered by the credit issuer or lender rather than the unfortunate victim of this crime. How they managed to hold victims responsible for their irresponsible lending practices is beyond comprehensible to me.
I'm not saying you're wrong.... It's just a damn shame that the industry got away with making the victim financially responsible for the criminal misconduct of others. They should be forced to eat the losses themselves for their lenient lending standards.