If your Facebook friend doesn’t “like” paying his or her bills on time, you might want to seek another friendship before applying for a loan.

CNNMoney reports several tech startups have found ways to determine the creditworthiness of loan seekers by looking at how much they interact with friends who have bad credit.

In essence, if you are friends with people who have bad credit and interact with them often, you could be deemed a high credit risk and denied a loan. Conversely, if you are friends with someone whose credit is solid, that could help you land a loan.

Lenddo co-founder and CEO Jeff Stewart told CNNMoney his tech company is able to use “massive computing power” to determine whether you are friends with some who’s behind on payments to Lenddo.

Kreditech, a data scoring company, says it uses massive amounts of data and complex algorithms to predict how creditworthy you are based on up to 8000 data points, such as social media activity, e-commerce purchases, and even your GPS locations.

“Kreditech can determine your location and considers creditworthiness based upon whether your computer is located where you said you live or work,” the report said.

Are lenders going too far in looking at your social media accounts to determine your creditworthiness?

About the Author

Keep Reading

Georgia Power's Plant Bowen in Cartersville is shown. The utility wants to add about 10,000 megawatts of power supplies in just five years, mainly to serve data centers. (Hyosyb Shin/AJC 2015)

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Featured

Yemaya Lyles (right) wipes away tears during a news conference in front of the Rockdale County Public Schools administration building on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. Lyles' son, Antonio, was assaulted by a paraprofessional, who has since been fired and charged with battery. Lyles says her case against the school district has dragged on since then. (Miguel Martinez/AJC 2023)

Credit: Miguel Martinez