Dodgy Facebook friends could stop you from getting a loan
Banks might have the right to stalk our profiles
Jack CummingsDodgy Facebook friends who are bad with money could stop you from getting a loan.
Banks can access your profile and determine whether they want to lend you money based on your friends’ credit history.
Facebook have patented new technology which allows banks to look at your friends’ profiles to judge how likely you are to pay back loans.
The social network bought a huge pack of patents for $40 million – just over £26 million – including the right to sell on our friends list to banks.
This means you could be denied a loan just because your friends have defaulted or been slow in their payments.
Your Facebook friends could harm your chances of getting a loan
The patent reads: “When an individual applies for a loan, the lender examines the credit ratings of members of the individual’s social network who are connected to the individual through authorized nodes.
“If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application.
“Otherwise, the loan application is rejected.”
While this appears to just cover standard bank loans, it could affect our career advancement loans or even our student loans themselves.
The patent was bought from gaming social network Friendster back in 2010.
Facebook bought the patent for over £26 million
But luckily this doesn’t mean Facebook will necessarily be giving banks access to our profiles any time soon.
Adam Epstein from Quartz wrote: “Major tech companies (Facebook and Google, specifically) secure patents for weird ideas all the time — that doesn’t mean they’ll ever be implemented,”
“Facebook could decide to use just part of the patent, while disregarding the lending portion.
“Or it could just be a superfluous part of the patent bundle Facebook bought from Friendster that was never intended to be used.
“Or the patent could be an asset to be sold on to someone else.”
Facebook have declined to comment on the patent.