Scoring: New Legislation in Germany

摘要

Data protection has become an increasingly important aspect of consumer policy in recent years in Germany. One of the most interesting subjects under discussion was that of scoring. Scoring attempts to give a prognosis as to whether a consumer is willing and able to repay a given kind of credit. While the USA already had specific regulations on scoring, there was no such equivalent in Germany, especially with regard to consumer rights on transparency. In 2009, the German parliament approved a specific regulation under the Data Protection Act on scoring which came into effect on 1 April 2010. This new law set standards for scoring and granted transparency rights to consumers. One of the effects has been that large numbers of consumers have since availed of these new rights and addressed scoring agencies in order to receive information on their scores.