10:44 PM PDT on Friday, April 28, 2006

By LORI MATSUKAWA / KING 5 News

When you apply for a home loan and give out your personal information, you assume it's all confidential between you and the lender, right?

Think again. Your private financial details, like phone number, debt balances and credit score, are all for sale.  

That's why you get so many offers right after buying a house. It’s a practice called the “trigger list.” 

When Pat Barney recently applied for a home equity loan, he was surprised and alarmed by a call right afterward. 

"I got a call from a company that indicated they saw that I had recently inquired about a home loan," said Barney. 

As a mortgage broker himself, Barney wondered how the caller, a lender he had never contacted, knew he had just applied for a loan. 

"It concerned me that they would know my personal information," said Barney. 

So Barney did some digging and found out he was on something called a trigger list. It's a list compiled by the credit bureaus, in this case, of people applying for home loans.

"The credit bureaus are sort of sending out your information to third-party providers that are then selling that to competing lenders in your area," said Leigh Gallagher, SmartMoney Magazine.

Competing lenders who are nabbing information like your phone number, debt balances and credit score. 

"What's new about this is that they're getting it at the very moment that you're applying for the loan," said Gallagher. 

The Federal Trade Commission says these lists are perfectly legal. 

"The law permits the credit bureaus to sell and lenders to buy lists of consumers who meet certain criteria," said Joel Winston, Federal Trade Commission. 

Credit bureaus say the lists help consumers in the long run because they can compare and contrast more competitive offers. But if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. 

"If they leave a company that has got them locked in at a protected rate to go off to another company who's offering them pie-in-the-sky, they could be hurt," said Ginny Ferguson, National Association of Mortgage Brokers. 

"If they're bait and switched or the offers are not real offers, then consumers can be harmed," said Joel Winston, Federal Trade Commission.  

If you are lured away by a better offer, make sure you check on the company with the Better Business Bureau first. 

If you want to remove your name from these trigger lists, you can opt out. Just call 888-5-OPT-OUT (888-567-8688).