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Social media is becoming more and more a part of our everyday life, but could your social media life start to impact your financial life? It is starting to look that way.
Small start-up lenders that lend out smaller amounts of money are starting to look at different social media profiles to see if credit applicants are credit worthy enough, according to the Wall Street Journal. Even FICO, which is the company that supplies credit scores that are used for a majority of lenders, is starting to figure out how social media profiles can factor into your credit score, although they haven’t started using it as a factor yet.
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So what exactly will the lenders be looking at to see if you are worthy of a line of credit or not? At this point, it could be anything you post to social media, but here are a few areas that they are already using:
On Social Media: First and foremost, make sure that all of your social media profiles have all of the privacy setting set as high as possible. This includes your Twitter feed, Pinterest page and even Instagram account. Any personal information that lenders can access could be used to determine your credit worthiness.
Know Your Credit Score: Keep track of your credit score. If you get denied for a line of credit or a loan, but you know your credit score should be high enough to qualify, you can ask the lender why you were denied and what outside factors were considered. You can access your credit score for free (seriously, you don’t even need to give your credit card information) at a site like Credit Sesame, which will track your score each month. If your credit score has taken a hit because of social media use, you can do things to help recover your score, like paying off your debts, disputing negative items on your credit report, or hiring a credit repair service to help you do it. Read credit repair reviews to do your research on credit repair companies to find a legitimate service.
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