[SilasX]

No, but it's more tied-in than you might think: supposedly (haven't personally verified but) it's used for employment and car insurance decisions because it correlates so well with bad/reckless behavior.

(IIRC in CA it's illegal to use for car insurance rating, but I'm guessing that in practice that just means they use something else known to have a good correlation with it.)

[echelon]

I'm in Atlanta. They use credit checks for certain types of employment here. I've also heard that it's used for insurance rates, and obviously, interest rates.