Data Protection And Consumer Information Rights

On 30 July 2008 Germany's federal government published a revised draft (Kabinettsentwurf) of an act changing and amending the German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). The draft act defines and regulates scoring procedures to strengthen consumers' (Verbraucher) access to information and describes consumers' rights to information in case of automated credit decisions or decisions based on scoring procedures.

One of the draft act's main goals is to regulate consumers' information rights so they understand the credit agencies' scoring procedures, which in many cases relate to loan applications. These scoring procedures measure credit risk using a standardized mathematical formula based on a credit report. Credit agencies use several factors, such as age, employment and marital status, and combine these factors with other information to get a final rating for a consumer. Factors that