What Can You Stop–and What Can’t You Stop?

Posted by on December 1st, 2008 at 05:05pm

Mary Frakes wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Federal privacy laws give you the right to stop (opt out of) some sharing of your personal financial information. These laws balance your right to privacy with financial companies’ need to provide information for normal business purposes. You have the right to opt out of some information sharing with companies that are:

Part of the same corporate group as your financial company (oraffiliates)
Not part of the same corporate group as your financial company (ornon-affiliates).

But you cannot opt out and completely stop the flow of all your personal financial information. The law permits your financial companies to share certain information about you without giving you the right to opt out. Among other things, your financial company can provide to non-affiliates:

Information about you to firms that help promote and market the company’s own products or products offered under a joint agreement between two financial companies
Records of your transactions–such as your loan payments, credit card or debit card purchases, […]

Read the rest of this great post here

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