Critical Issues Regarding the Employment of Blockchain in Thenfinancial Credit Reporting Industry

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the critical issues regarding the employment of blockchain by the credit reporting industry. Blockchain is a distributed database of bundled digital records that contains transactions that are typically available for public inspection. Blockchain has been marketed as a secure and safe means of storing data because of its distributed nature and because the data in a blockchain are immutable, meaning that it cannot be changed. Block chain also possesses the characteristic that no one individual can change or alter data once it has been recorded in a blockchain. The inability to change or delete data when it has been recorded is the core of the problem facing the credit reporting industry. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and other State privacy laws, the General Data Protection Regulation, and other privacy laws in foreign countries are at loggerheads with blockchain because they demand that consumers have the right to correct or delete their data. These laws will likely not change because of the very human desire for certain things to remain private. Although no technical solution is provided, the point of the paper is to demonstrate the need for blockchain to change technologically.