On April 27, Doom reported on "credit repair" companies.  According to BrokerCA of Broker Outpost:

Companies claim to raise FICO credit scores by 50 to 250 points by adding low-scoring borrowers as "authorized users" on the credit card accounts of people with FICO scores well in excess of 700. The positive payment information from such cardholders then flows into the files of the persons with subpar credit.

Doom asked at the time, How can subprime be contained when you don’t know who’s a subprime borrower?

Well they are perhaps a day late and a declining U.S. dollar short, but Fair Isaac announced yesterday that they are clamping down on this practice:  [Hat tip to John- I "borrowed" this one before he had a chance to put it on the sidebar.]

A trick that some borrowers have used to boost their credit scores is about to lose its punch.

Fair Isaac Corp. won’t include the practice of including "authorized account users" when it calculates its FICO credit scores.

The Minneapolis-based company said late Monday that the move was prompted by the growing number of consumers who pay a fee to have their names attached to credit card accounts with clean records as a way to quickly raise their credit scores.

Not everyone is happy with the change:

Some analysts worry that excluding authorized account users will hurt some people, including students and divorcees, who need that status to establish credit.

Still, this should help make a FICO score more meaningful.  It’s unfortunate that this didn’t happen until the party is, for the most part, over–like the Phantom at the Masquerade, there’s no telling what dangerous characters are masquerading already as invited party revelers.