Certree

07/24/2023

Exciting news! Certree has partnered with Kern Community College District (KCCD) to empower students and employees to take control of their personal credentials. 🎓💼 This collaboration ensures privacy, data security, and protection against identity theft and credential fraud.

05/23/2023

Is your employer selling your sensitive payroll data? This research by Duke University sheds much-needed light on how data brokers and their subsidiaries are sourcing tens of millions of active and historic employment records from over 2.5M contributors who are selling or sending sensitive employee data. At Certree, we wish to empower every individual to control their own data.

Read on to know how and why your sensitive employment data might be at risk.

Fortune 500 Companies’ Selling and Sharing of Employee Data Alistair Simmons February 6, 2023 Many companies report their employee data to data brokers who manage employment records, conduct background checks,...

05/15/2023

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (CFPB) has issued a Request for Information to understand the complete repercussions of data brokers’ practices & impact on consumer lives. This is a big step that will uncover how these data brokers are using our sensitive data in the open. At Certree, we’ve started a data security revolution where each individual can own their data and decide with whom it should be shared. We’re grateful to the CFPB and Director Rohit Chopra for their focus on bringing this important topic to the forefront.

We urge you to share with the CFPB how you’ve been impacted by your interactions with data brokers. Read more on how this inquiry by CFPB paves the way for a more secure future.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has launched an inquiry into companies that track and collect information on people’s personal lives.

05/09/2023

Certree is paving the way for unprecedented data safety & security through its zero-trust technology. By empowering employees to own and control their own information, we are disrupting today’s broker-centric verification systems.

“There’s a trend toward giving employees the greater right to know how their information is used and where it’s being sent so they have more rights to opt-out.”, comments our CEO & Co-Founder, Pavan Kochar, in a recent article from SHRM.
Read this article to learn more about the future of hiring.

Digital wallets that store career credentials promise benefits for recruiters and job candidates.

03/13/2023

What makes Manpower Group one of the Most Ethical Companies in the world? The fact that they CARE for their employees & their data security! Watch Chantel Byrd, VP of Shared Services at Manpower US share why they trust Certree!

We serve 30k+ organizations to revolutionize data sharing without compromising on security. Do you wish to welcome the change? Check us out at www.certree.com or email us at [email protected].

11/01/2022

Building trust with your employees is the hallmark of a healthy company culture and a positive brand image. And in this era of information explosion, the concern that companies show for their employees’ data has become a cornerstone of corporate trust.

However, most companies hand over workers’ private employment data to third-party brokers like Equifax and Experian, which have been responsible for some of the largest data breaches in history.

Check out this Equilar, Inc. article from Verizon and Okta board member Shellye Archambeau, which outlines how this broker-centered system for employment and income verification “poses incredible risks to worker privacy” and how alternatives like Certree “bypass the broker databases that attract cyberattacks, and they enable workers to control their privacy.”

It’s never been easier for companies to lose the public’s trust. Between 24/7 news networks, billions of social media users and a media system that thrives on controversy and scandal, even small news stories can snowball into an avalanche of negative coverage. That’s especially true for storie...

09/28/2022

Our solution gives workers control over their own salary and employment data; here’s what we’re up against.

For decades, Equifax and Experian have collected and sold tens of millions of workers’ most sensitive payroll data. To do this, these giant brokers engage in anti-consumer, anti-competitive practices that threaten workers’ privacy and digital security. In this letter to the Federal Trade Commission, we describe in detail how these brokers vacuum up workers’ personal data without their well-informed consent, transmit faulty data that devastates workers’ financial planning, and regularly expose this data to massive breaches.

The petition also shows how these brokers create added costs for both workers and employers and stifle any innovation that would empower everyday workers. The petition concludes with an urgent call for the FTC to investigate these practices as potential violations of the FTC Act.

https://certree.com/assets/petition_to_ftc.pdf

07/01/2022

Check out this new article from HR.com, where former Federal Trade Commission official Steve Baker Baker explains the “3 Reasons To Stop Sending Payroll Data To Brokers.”

For decades, HR teams have relied on major data brokers to help verify their employees’ records – exposing workers to massive security threats, creating enormous FCRA legal liability, and driving a wedge between employers and workers. This broker-centered system also separates workers from their own data. As Steve explains, “To giant data brokers, workers are not their partners or even their consumers. They are brokers’ product – a commodity to be packaged and sold over and over again.”

With Certree’s secure, encrypted vaults, workers can control their own data. Certree’s system helps workers keep their data private, creates a more efficient process to verify employment records, and challenges a network of data brokers that collect and sell our most personal information.

In this article, we will talk about the risks of sharing employees’ payroll data with brokers and what alternative methods can employers avail to protect worker data and limit legal liability.

05/11/2022

CEO Pavan Kochar co-founded Certree to transform an industry where giant data brokers collect and sell our personal payroll data for a hefty profit. In this interview with NBC Bay Area's Consumer Investigator Chris Chmura, Pavan explains how Certree’s patented platform empowers workers to reclaim ownership of their data – bypassing the brokers that create massive security risks in order to sell our most sensitive information. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/consumer/your-pay-stub-is-probably-in-the-cloud-silicon-valley-startup-recommends-a-vault-instead/2883933/

05/07/2022

NBC Bay Area's Consumer Investigator Chris Chmura digs into the broken system for verifying salary and employment data. Certree CEO Pavan Kochar explains how Certree enables workers to own, store, and share their data, instead of relying on data brokers. https://certree.com/news

05/06/2022

Tune into NBC Bay Area tonight at 11 PT to see Consumer Investigator Chris Chmura discuss how Certree is working to “lock down your paystubs so imposters, identity thieves, and debt collectors can’t see it without your permission.” CEO Pavan Kochar explains how Certree’s patented platform empowers workers to own, store, and share their salary data using secure, encrypted vaults.

The old system for verifying employee records relies on giant data brokers that put workers’ privacy and security at risk. Certree is changing that industry for the better and cutting out data brokers as middlemen.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nbc-bay-area-news-live-stream-newscasts/2153541/