ICYMI: Earlier this month, Equifax disclosed that it had sent out incorrect credit scores to banks and other lenders for potentially hundreds of thousands of customers. For nearly 300,000 people, that error resulted in a 25-point or higher shift in their credit scores — enough for some people to be denied a loan.

To be clear: Equifax has, like, one job. It's one of three big credit scoring firms that are supposed to accumulate consumer data that gets mysteriously boiled down to a number between 300 and 850 and then sold to financial institutions for a profit (more on that in a minute).

A higher score, of course, is a shorthand way of telling a bank that a person is reliable and likely to pay back whatever loan they're seeking. Lower scores = less reliable, which means lenders may deny you financing, or grant it with punishingly high interest rates.

Oh, and even though that data can have life-altering consequences, you do not own it, nor have much power to dispute it. The process is deliberately murky. And you cannot opt out of the system. I repeat, you cannot opt out.

The Equifax screw-up from this spring is just one that we know about, thanks to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, which forced the company to acknowledge the mistakes.

ICYMI: Earlier this month, Equifax disclosed that it had sent out incorrect credit scores to banks and other lenders for potentially hundreds of thousands of customers. For nearly 300,000 people, that error resulted in a 25-point or higher shift in their credit scores — enough for some people to be denied a loan.

To be clear: Equifax has, like, one job. It's one of three big credit scoring firms that are supposed to accumulate consumer data that gets mysteriously boiled down to a number between 300 and 850 and then sold to financial institutions for a profit (more on that in a minute).

A higher score, of course, is a shorthand way of telling a bank that a person is reliable and likely to pay back whatever loan they're seeking. Lower scores = less reliable, which means lenders may deny you financing, or grant it with punishingly high interest rates.

Oh, and even though that data can have life-altering consequences, you do not own it, nor have much power to dispute it. The process is deliberately murky. And you cannot opt out of the system. I repeat, you cannot opt out.

The Equifax screw-up from this spring is just one that we know about, thanks to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, which forced the company to acknowledge the mistakes.