EVERY application I have EVER seen, without exception – whether for employment or for an apartment to rent – contains a provision by which I must sign away these rights before they will even accept the application. Are those provisions legally valid? Or does the law stipulate that this right cannot be signed away?
I have done these two things. I haven’t found anything.
Actually nevadaexile, I searched a little more with the operand and I actually found two (out of many) sites purportedly disclosing public information and on those two, an alias was listed under my name, the first name was mine…and the last name of the alias is the maiden name from my first wife. We got married in college in the mid 1990’s when we were in our early 20’s and got a dissolution shortly thereafter. I have no clue why that would show up like that.
But on a few of those same sites, they list my name with some addresses I have lived at, and some I’ve never heard of before.
So weird.
As of some 10 years ago, the US government had a list of 22 aliases for me: shortenings of my name, all kinds of typos (including one which I only encountered on a library card in the US, don’t ask me how did that one get to Homeland Security’s computers) and the wonderfully generic Maria Garcia, which I’d encountered once when a debt collector called me asking whether I’d purchased a washing machine under that name and failed to make any payments (I asked and “sigh yes”, they were planning on calling every Hispanic woman in Florida to ask whether she’d stolen a washing machine… which for all I know could have gotten on a plane to Venezuela).
All those kids who are being called T’Challa only it’s spelled Th’Kayla, or Cassandra only it’s Keyxander? I expect they’ll end up with lists of aliases longer than mine, simply from your government’s notion that it’s cost-effective to collect every way in which someone screws up another someone’s name and calling it an “alias”, rather than limiting the list to names the person has actually given himself.
I had a phony alternate spelling of my name that I used for rebates back when you could send in for a few dollars refund on batteries or whatever.
Years later that alias turned on my credit report. :mad: WTF? :smack:
Credit report services run programs that attempt to match data that may not be related or have a very loose association, such as addresses. My credit has been improperly combined with other family relatives since some helped out when my parents were incapacitated and from a credit bureau that doesn’t care, three different people became one with two aliases.
This is even worse if your family is structured as Senior, Junior, 3rd, 4th, etc. – these often get left off (computer fields are short) and George Jones, Sr. becomes the same person as George Jones, Jr. to the credit bureaus. They simply do not care.
Again, there is no legal obligation to notify anyone about this, or to perform even the simplest cross-check. The credit bureaus think that it’s more important to make mistakes that might be useful than be accurate, and there’s no penalty if they are inaccurate.
FYI: There are services like Zendough that will monitor your credit reports real-time and email you if anything is added or changed. This might be a good idea for some, and I believe the cost is about $30 per month.
My credit is really bad, and I am trying to repair it. I pay $17.95 a month to some credit card site, and they will alert me if my info changes, rates go up or down, if there is a hard request from a company etc. Every month I get a full report. I think it is worth it. Just something to consider. 
Definitely call them up and explain that you are formally requesting that they make available to you the report containing the information about your supposed alias. If they balk, explain that you are making this request as your legal right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Even if they’re not going to hire you, you want to make sure you know about this before the next time a potential employer has the same check done on you.
How do you get this list? Is there some US Department of Naming Conventions where you can call and they send you a list of aliases they think you have?
This is what you need to do. They have to show you what info they have.
Is this the car salesman option job?
Good luck on getting a job …
Or just say that you want to make sure nobody is using your information without your knowledge, and that you have given them every version of your name that you are aware of having used. Heck, when Tom Scud and I were buying a condo shortly after we got married, my credit report showed my first name and his last name as an alias for me. I have never used his last name. The only entity that has used my first name and his last name for me was some stupid piece of direct mail that assumed I would use his last name once we got married. I had it removed with no problems.
There are so many problems like this with credit reports that I can’t imagine anyone refusing a request to see the so-called “derogatory” information on which a decision was based. PM me if you get stuck - my employer does FCRA work and I might be able to get someone to point you in the right direction.
I have used two and only two version of my name since my marriage 25 years ago. One is my full legal name, and the other is a short version I was more or less forced to because ninnies can’t cope with a hyphenated last name all of two syllables long.
I have encountered a job situation were I was presented with a dozen variations on my name and asked why I didn’t report using these aliases. I never used those aliases. I suspect half of them were misspellings or mutants from mass-market mailing lists. I just kept repeating I myself had never, ever used those names, no, not once, no, I don’t have a middle name, have never used a middle name, don’t use that spelling, have never used that variation…
I don’t know if it was a bizarre test or what, but I was allowed to pass onto the next phase of the hiring process.
It would be interesting to discover what aliases the OP is being accused of using. A Michael Jeffrey Smith with aliases of M.J. Smith, Mike Smith, M. Jeffrey Smith is one thing. But Michael Jeffrey Smith, alias Sneaky Pete Fortuna III is something all together different.
Hire an attorney to write a demand letter.
I never thought about it, but I get a good bit of junk mail with my neighbor’s first name and my last name. He doesn’t even live on the neighboring parcel - it’s 100 acres of empty. He doesn’t have a mailbox on the street. His name is not at all similar to mine - he’s from Lebanon and has a distinctly foreign-sounding name. Since these are often solicitations, there must be a credit file out there somewhere with that name on it. I wonder how I can check?
StG
It was…Tater Salad.
I agree but none of them are remotely close to my real last name. I will admit that they got “Steve” correct, even though that isn’t my birth name associated with my SSN, birth certificate, driver’s license, etc.
Good grief.
I convinced the powers that be that I was not that person and I got the job. Hooray!
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
Mods, please close as necessary.
Now you should start using the alias! Have a confederate call and ask for (alias).
