◼ Regulators Have Concerns About Lenders' Use of Facebook, Other Sites - Wall St. Journal
More lending companies are mining Facebook, and other social-media data to help determine a borrower's creditworthiness or identity, a trend that is raising concerns among consumer groups and regulators....
Lending companies—some of which are backed with venture funding from Google Ventures, GOOG +0.35% the venture-capital arm of Google Inc., and Accel Partners, an early Facebook Inc. investor—are looking at potential problems such as whether applicants put the same job information on their loan application as they posted on LinkedIn, or if they shared on Facebook that they had been let go by an employer. A small business that draws negative reviews on eBay also could undermine its chances of getting more credit, lending companies say.
