Surveillance Credit & Big Tech
Banks and Tech Companies are watching you. What they see decides how much you pay to stay afloat.
As Big Banks and Big Tech use information about borrowers’ behavior when deciding who gets credit and how much credit costs, we are sounding the alarm on how this practice could drive families even further into debt—and who profits from it. Financial firms increasingly rely on AI to target customers, make offers, and set the cost of credit, working hand-in-hand with retail giants like Amazon to blur the line between finance and commerce. At the leading edge of this movement, AI models digest data about where you live, where you went to school, what you shop for, and even where you go on the internet—spitting out decisions that can be the difference between getting by and going broke.
What We’re Doing
Protect Borrowers’ research, investigations, and litigation into surveillance tactics by financial firms moves markets, drives congressional oversight, and shapes public understanding of how these firms use families’ data when deciding who gets credit and how much it costs. Highlights from this work include:
Protect Borrowers redefined the practice of “Educational Redlining”—offering the first warnings about financial firms’ use of information about where you went to school to determine whether you qualify for a mortgage, a car loan, or other kinds of credit. We warned about racial discrimination and algorithmic bias by FinTech firms and banks across the economy, partnered with civil rights groups to hold financial firms accountable, and conducted groundbreaking investigations into companies’ tactics that can raise costs or deny credit to borrowers from historically disenfranchised communities.
For more than half a century, for-profit firms have sold career training to students and workers, promising to help build skills that can unlock greater economic gains in the labor market. In the 21st century, much of this career training has moved online, financed by students and workers using credit cards, paying cash, and relying on short-term credit, including “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) loans. Fraud is pervasive across the career training market. Our investigation into these practices exposed how the largest BNPL firms offer credit to students and workers pursuing a broad range of unproven programs and obvious scams, with few safeguards or controls.
By The Numbers
17% of Households
17% of households report using Buy Now, Pay Later credit to pay for medical or dental care, and 14% of households report using Buy Now, Pay Later credit for groceries.
more than 100
A Protect Borrowers investigation found more than 100 online career training programs that offer Buy Now, Pay Later financing to prospective students and workers.
In The Field
In The News
Featured Work
EXPLORE OUR OTHER WORK
SHADOW STUDENT DEBT
We expose how predatory schools and finance companies work together to drive students to take on billions of dollars in debt—spread across credit cards, home equity loans, and other private credit—to finance their education. Once students take on these debts, they face aggressive debt collection practices, which leave borrowers in distress and drowning in debt.
PRIVATE STUDENT LENDING
We shed light on the unique risks and harms experienced by students and families in the growing private student loan market and push for policy change to strengthen borrowers’ rights and protections.
EDUCATIONAL REDLINING
As financial companies use information about families’ behavior when deciding who gets credit and how much it costs, we are sounding the alarm on how this practice treats information about where you went to school and how much education you have—practices that can increase costs or deny credit to people from historically disenfranchised communities and may violate fair lending laws.
SCAM SCHOOLS
We work with state and federal policymakers to protect families from low-quality, predatory schools and online tech companies that leave students with worthless degrees and training and mountains of debt.