It's all because of a company called Lenddo that uses social networking to analyse your credit worthiness. It is an online loan service and when you sign up you must provide details of all the social networks that you belong to. In the FAQ is this description:
"Lenddo is a scoring engine that analyzes your online social footprint (sometimes called a social graph) and provides a score that can be used to access financial services such as personal loans."
So it looks at your friends, relatives and work colleagues that you are connected to in your social networks and...
"Friends that don't pay their debts will negatively impact your Lenddo score, and your ability to access credit."
This means that you can't be friends with anyone who struggles to pay their bills because they will negatively affect your own credit rating. Just think, if you have a problem and miss a loan or credit card payment your friends won't help you, they'll all abandon you because you're affecting their credit rating. Got a problem? You're on your own!
It gets worse and just take a look at this from Lenddo's FAQ:
"Failure to repay will negatively impact your Lenddo score, as well as the score of your Lenddo friends. Lenddo MAINTAINS THE RIGHT TO NOTIFY YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY."
Yes, they'll tell all your friends, family and contacts that you've slipped up and missed a bill payment or two. Do they post messages on your Facebook wall? That's a scary thought!
Now Lenddo is based in the Phillippines, so it won't effect most people, but you can bet that western banks and other financial institutions are looking at this and considering it themselves. It makes you wonder whether social networking is a good idea if it can be used against you in this way.
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