There is no accessible option to request by mail. There is a tiny link (Contact us) that leads to a handful of FAQs. This isn’t a post in the Credit Report community. I’m not asking for advice on cred it report printing. I’m pointing out the blatant attempt by a $6b company to usurp even more rights to individuals’ lives than they already have.

I tried the mail in form and it was ignored

I’m pretty sure that federally it’s mandated that you have to be able to mail it in.

It’s not, or they wouldn’t need to request my explicit permission to obtain it. You don’t need to guess what it’s for because we know that credit “bureaus” exist to profile “consumers” and sell their information, whether aggregate or personal. They’re asking to gain access to my carrier account and my device information. This is about data inventory. The credit bureaus know who has it and want permission to buy it from them.

Can confirm, it is information they already have. Below is likely the API the telco exposes to the bureau. Each data point queried returns true, false, or a confidence score.

It is intended as an anti-fraud tool. Not saying I agree with it. Something like PGP is sufficient for building out a web-of-trust without needing to share my personal information.

https://redocly.github.io/redoc/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fcamaraproject%2FKnowYourCustomer%2Fr1.4%2Fcode%2FAPI_definitions%2Fkyc-match.yaml&nocors=#tag/Match/operation/KYC_Match

I’ve run into issues with SMS-based 2FA (yikes) on some websites because my phone number was a landline number I purchased then later transferred to my wireless carrier.

I bring this up because I’ve noticed some websites have the typical “we’ll confirm your information with your wireless carrier” verbiage, but those generally mention they do so to determine whether the number is a landline or wireless.

I’m super unsure of what’s going on in this case, but when I first saw this screenshot this is what came to mind.

This is not a verification request. If you look at the screenshot, they are explicitly asking to have access to the intimate data that my cellular carrier is willing to transfer to them, given my perpetual release of it. Probably because of an existing bargain between the two parties on how much each will bid if one takes on the other’s liability (phone company advertises they won’t release all your data forever > but phone company promotes credit company > credit company boldly requests usage data > credit company pays phone company and both win).

These are corporations who make their money by selling peoples’ data. Offering a free copy of the report is and always was just a pacifier for the privacy advocates who wanted legislation. They don’t actually have any interest in providing credit reports to the “consumer” securely or within the legally required timeframe. Their interest is in obtaining more data and in the security/validity of their own harvested datum, which are assets to them.

It’s not authentication. They are specifically requesting access to cellular information that my service provider can’t sell to them unless I give them authorization. Authorization to obtain my most intimate data (communication usage) in order to complete their data profile on me is not the same thing as authentication.

This happened on annualcreditreport.com.

Its one of 3 companies in the USA that gather tons of information about everyone so they can come up with a magic number that landlords and banks can use to decide if a person is worth giving money to or not, and also to sell you a service that will notify you when they inevitably get hacked again and someone tries to "steal" your "identity"

Its one of the US's three main ~~social~~ credit score companies, that determines your ability to rent or buy a home or car or get a job by selling your credit data to companies that perform background checks on you, background credit checks which you pay for.