[benjvi]

Articles critical of the loss of privacy that comes along with social media often come up with this type of scaremongering. 'If you know someone that has bad credit, then you won't be able to get credit either'. Well, if your relationships do actually effect your ability to repay your debts, then banks would be right to be at least a little more wary of giving you credit - amd you should not be trying to overextend your credit.

I would have said that the undesirable practices that are mentioned - such as redlining - are the result of using crude, discriminatory heuristics rather than the result of having too much data about customers. This isn't necessarily a bad development - it could enable banks to lend to more marginal borrowers if they could see they had a strong support network. Clearly, if you have a good conventional credit record, then your social credit will hardly matter. Banks that use this new source of data stupidly won't do well.