Why Is Facebook Checking Your Credit Report?

After temporarily deactivating my account, I logged onto Facebook today for the first time in three solid months. It took me only a few minutes to get back into the swing of wasting time reading people's status posts - mostly about the Presidential Debate, the soon coming demise of Big Bird if Romney wins the election next month, and other random things. Before I knew it a couple of hours passed me right on by.

My time spent wasn't a total lost though.  One of the things I did was re-established my Networked Blogs set-up so that my blog posts would automatically publish to my Facebook wall.  And that's when I took note of the nifty NEW feature (yes it's new . . . it just started 10/3) that allows you to promote your posts!  How cool is that, right?  For a small fee - only $7.00, you can have the post of your choosing displayed as a sponsored post, thereby potentially gaining more visibility and exposure.

Here's an article on it published by USA Today - 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2012/10/03/facebook-promoted-posts/1611443/

So . . . interested in exploring this new opportunity, thinking it may be a new and innovative way to promote a book or three, I clicked on the "promote" button, then clicked on the link that reads "Terms Apply".  Of course there was a whole list of legal jargon, but I scrolled down quickly, trying to find out just how far that $7.00 investment would stretch in terms of days of promotion.  And that is when I saw it . . . Section 5.2

• Consent to credit check. Without limiting Section 3.2 above, your order constitutes your written authorization for us to obtain your personal and/or business credit report from a credit bureau. We may obtain your credit report when you place an order, or at any time thereafter.

What???  Why is Facebook trying to check my credit report??  What the . . .  

Or any time thereafter???  Facebook folks are just gonna pull my credit report any time they get good and ready???   No thanks.  Not worth the seven bucks to me.

By the way, here is what Section 3.2 says:

• Inquiries. By using Facebook Payments, you acknowledge and agree that we may make any inquiries that we consider necessary, either directly or through third parties, concerning your identity and creditworthiness.

Is Facebook crazy?  I'm not doing that. Instantly, I'd lost all interest. I have enough going on in my life without worrying about Facebook sneaking around checking my credit.  Well, you know what they say . . . look before you leap.  Glad I looked . . . this time.  Normally, I just agree to stuff without second thought.  (I'm not the only one who's done that am I?)

Here is the link to the terms if you want to read them all. 
 https://www.facebook.com/payments_terms/  I didn't. What I found was enough for me. I'll stick to Triberr, tweeting and spamming people's walls the non-credit-checking way!  LOL!





Kimberly T. Matthews

"I knew exactly how many condoms were left in his gym bag, in a little black box, wrapped in gold foil. Seven. Each time I randomly checked for no other reason besides I knew they existed, there'd always been seven. So I was taken aback that morning when I went to do his laundry, peeked in the box and only found three..."
 Lisa from - "Lisa's Dress" 
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