The FTC, which is supposed to regulate credit bureaus, has taken no action on the sale of trigger lists according to USA Today.

Credit Slips is a terrific credit and bankruptcy blog which contributors are mostly law professors with deep knowledge about their topic. Professor Bob Lawless's post today provides links to previous posts in the Credit Slips blog about the NAF. Those posts include some nightmarish horror stories about consumers' experiences with arbitration. He also notes the NAF's high win rate for creditors and describes how the NAF acts almost as if they are a disguised debt collection agency.

We are encouraged by this commentary. Mandatory arbitration is a very bad way to resolve consumer disputes.

We were delighted to read in The San Francisco Chronicle's recent article that San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has sued the Minneapolis-based National Arbitration Forum (NAF), one of the nation's biggest arbitration companies, for unfair business practices. The lawsuit says the NAF "is actually in the business of operating an arbitration mill, churning out arbitration awards in favor of debt collectors and against California consumers."

The complaint cites statistics showing that of 18,075 cases brought before one of the NAF's arbitrators from January 2003 to March 2007, only 30 resulted in victories for consumers.

"The lengths to which [the NAF has] gone to ensure that California consumers lose in arbitrations against debt collectors is shocking," Herrera said in a statement.

Fair Isaac states the company's analysts pulled reports of 5 million consumers to see how their credit profiles fared over time. More information may be found in a recent issue of SmartMoney magazine.

But another report issued last February estimates that the problem is much worse than the FTC calculates. The market research firm Gartner's study suggested that 15 million Americans had been victimized in the 12-month period ending August 2006. If these numbers are right, you're four times as likely to be an identity theft victim as to be a street crime target.

The bottom line is, no one really knows how much identity theft occurs in the U.S. And what knowledge we do have about data breaches is only possible because California and about 35 other states require companies to reveal when certain sensitive data are leaked. Congress has so far failed to pass any equivalent federal law.

How do identity thieves gain access to so much sensitive consumer information? According to private sector data security expert Larry Ponemon, half of the data breaches were due to lost laptops. Malicious employees accounted for another 9 percent. A whopping 40 percent of the breaches involved a third party--either an outsourcer, consultant or other business partner.

The website was created by Deanne Loonin, a staff attorney at the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center. She says "the site describes the rights and obligations of student borrowers in plain language, so that they can understand their options, and stand up for themselves."

In a press release, Student Loan Borrower Assistance describes itself as "the first and only independent resource that provides advice and objective information for borrowers, their families, and legal advocates." The site features straightforward information about topics ranging from choosing a student loan to getting out of default and dealing with aggressive collection agencies. It also includes policy briefs, legal case studies, sample documents and promissory notes, and other valuable resources.

This should be an important resource for borrowers, who graduate with an average of $20,000 in student loans.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that an Ohio federal judge dismissed 14 foreclosure cases brought on behalf of Deutche Bank National Trust Company for a similar reason: Judge Christopher Boyko ruled that the bank had failed to prove it owned the properties it was trying to seize. The bank is trustee for securitization pools which claim to hold mortgages underlying the foreclosed properties.

Securitization pools are comprised of thousands of individual home loans packaged together by Wall Street firms. The pools are then sold to investors in different slices, based on risk. Trustee banks oversee these pools' operations and ensure that consumer payments go to the appropriate investors.

Deuthche Bank's problem was that it couldn't show that it really owned the note and mortgage on the properties it was trying to foreclose. Apparently that isn't unusual: One mortgage securities specialist quoted in the report said he has heard of instances where the same mortgage loan was in two or three mortgage pools. The report also cited a University of Iowa study that found 40 percent of creditors foreclosing on borrowers did not show proof of ownership, even though such proof gives them standing to foreclose and is required by law.

Attorneys for Deutche Bank argued that the judge didn't understand how foreclosures were supposed to work when securitization pools hold the mortgages, but Judge Boyko wasn't impressed; he said the bank's argument revealed a "condescending mindset." Needless to say, consumer advocates have applauded the ruling.

The study's results are shocking. In 2006 alone, debt collectors tried to collect nearly $1 billion from New York City consumers, and got judgments for about $800 million--an 80% success rate. Most of those suits are filed by debt buyers--not the original creditors--and about four out of every five of those suits result in default judgments for the debt collector, in which the consumer never appears in court or enters into a settlement agreement. The study revealed that 99% of the time that debt buyers brought lawsuits, they submitted invalid hearsay "evidence" that would be inadmissible in court if anyone ever challenged it.

What's the reason for the steep rise in consumer lawsuits? One reason is that regulators and courts largely gutted the regulatory schemes governing fees and interest that creditors are allowed to charge, beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s. A second factor is that these days nearly every consumer has access to credit of some kind or another, but lower-income consumers generally have to pay higher interest rates for their credit. Third, identity theft is on the rise. If a consumer's identity is stolen, she likely doesn't even know about the underlying debt, and probably isn't informed about a debt collection lawsuit either. Finally, the market for the purchase of defaulted debt--including debt that can no longer legally be collected--is exploding. Debt buyers purchase defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar, and then try to collect the full amount, an exceedingly profitable venture if it works.

The article suggests that when housing sales are down and the loan originating side of the lender is originating fewer mortgages, the loan servicing side makes up for the shortfall. That is because loan servicing can be extremely lucrative. Servicers, which collect payments from borrowers and pass them on to investors who own the loans, generally receive a percentage of loan income and typically generate profit margins of about 20 percent. Servicers typically keep charges such as late fees assessed on delinquent or defaulted loans, so defaults can give servicers an opportunity for additional profit.

Bankruptcy lawyers say that many of these servicer charges are blatantly illegal. For example, some lender charge hundreds of dollars in fax fees, overnight delivery fees and loan payoff fees that are never approved by the bankruptcy court.

Another problem is that in nearly three-quarters of bankruptcies, the lender says the borrower owes more than the borrower calculates, often due to excessive and unnecessary fees. In one especially egregious case, Wells Fargo charged the borrower for 16 unnecessary inspections of the borrowers’ property in the 29 months the bankruptcy case was pending.

This post linked to BusinessWeek's fine article about consumers who file bankruptcy under Chapter 7 and are supposed to have their debts erased. Many post-bankruptcy consumers were finding that debt collectors were continuing to pursue them for debts already discharged in bankruptcy. BusinessWeek's article said the driving force behind this phenomenon is a vibrant market in which certain debt buyers avidly buy and sell debts that should have been extinguished.

I just received a telephone call from one of these debt buyer's New York lawyers. This person disputed the accuracy of a quote in the article from a lawyer for one of the debt buyers and demanded I take down the post. So, First Amendment consideration aside, read the article yourself. It's well worth it.

A typical card will advertise a credit limit of $250, but that is reduced by a $50 membership fee, $119 acceptance fee and $6 monthly participation fee, leaving the consumer with only $75 of actual credit. And if the consumer goes over that, they are charged a $29 overlimit fee! The report tells the story of a sailor on leave who charged $85 on one of these cards with a purported $250 credit limit. Yet, because her net available credit was only $72 after the company charge its upfront fees, she incurred huge additional charges and is now paying off a balance of more than $300 for her $85 shopping spree.

Most "mainstream" credit card companies make their profits by generating interest income on account balances. These cards don't. They make their money by charging front-end fees to obtain the cards in the first place, because many cardholders are unable to make their payment on time or at all. Then, when the card issuer writes off the balance, it consists mostly of unpaid fees to itself! For example, in 2006, CompuCredit charged off more than $700 million, yet took in enough fees and interest to make $107 million in profit.

Consumers should look for these red flags in deciding whether a credit repair organization is legitimate. Beware of credit repair organizations that do any of the following:

1) The company requires an upfront fee. Under the federal Credit Repair Organizations Act, it is illegal for companies to charge consumers money before performing the promised credit-repair services

2) The company says it will dispute everything in the consumer's file including information that is correct. This seems like a no-brainer: disputing legitimate information is lying. If a company wants to lie, it's not reputable.

3) Before the consumer signs a contract, the company fails to provide them with a copy of the FTC's "Consumer Credit File Rights Under State and Federal Law," which outlines what ithe company can and cannot do.

4) The company tells the consumer not to directly contact the credit-reporting agencies. Sometimes this is the most efficient way to clear inaccurate information from consumer credit reports.

5) The company tells the consumer that it can get them a new credit identity by applying for an employer identification number (EIN) from the Internal Revenue Service. If the consumer doesn't own a business, this is not a legitimate way to repair the consumer's personal credit history. It is a federal crime to obtain an EIN under false pretenses.

The California Office of Privacy Protection website www.privacyprotection.ca.gov has details on how victims may freeze their credit files.

Yesterday Chris Arnold reported in a story on National Public Radio that Countrywide planned to refinance or modify some $16 billion worth of loans for more than 80,000 borrowers who will soon hit an unaffordable rate reset, or those who have already fallen behind after their payments rose. Some of those borrowers' interest rates had risen to as high as 13%.

It was good news for Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a nonprofit national housing advocacy group that had organized protests outside Countrywide's headquarters just a few weeks ago. Countrywide even hired Neighborhood Assistance Corporation as a contractor to contact homeowners and figure out how much they can afford to pay.

But some critics are skeptical about how much far Countrywide's efforts will go to alleviate the crisis. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, says the 80,000 loans Countrywide is committed to modifying is a small chunk of the 2 million people who face losing their homes.

On the other hand according to the story, critics also fault consumers for committing to more house than they could afford.

Consumers should avoid the websites set up by Experian, Equifax and Trans Union that promise free credit reports but are designed to induce the purchase or credit scores and credit protection schemes of little or no value.