From the Misinformation Files

I think I may start highlighting stories that I find around the Web that are just flat-out wrong and hazardous to your knowledge bank.To wit, readers in West Texas got a heavy dose of misinformation yesterday, when CBS 7 (which caters to places like Midland and Odessa, Texas) published a story on recent scoring changes. According to the article, FICO will no longer factor authorized users into its scoring model. As a result, according to the article, your score may have recently changed. Wrong! As readers of Credit Matters know, Fair Isaac, the creator of FICO, recently said that it would include authorized users in its FICO 08 scoring model when it finally rolls the product out. For those of you over at CBS 7: FICO 08 isn’t available yet, so even if authorized users weren’t calculated in the model (though they are), the score changes wouldn’t even be noticeable yet.The article then suggested that, in an effort to counter-react the impact of the FICO “change,” people get credit in their own name or apply for new cards jointly. Finally, I am not even going to address the article’s comment about scoring populations (FICO scorecards). OK. I will. The added amount of populations, the article said, would help reduce errors. Uh, what in the world are they talking about? Scorecards are used for segregation purposes. Scorecards are useful because people with similar profiles are lumped together for scoring purposes. If you have a recent late, you’ll be on the same scorecard as those who also had a recent late payment. If you’ve never been late, you’ll be scored with that group of people. The additional scoring populations will help reduce errors? Oh, boy.The rest of the article is just as bad. Tread lightly, dear readers. Here is the CBS 7 article: Credit Scoring Change May Have Changed Your Score.