Credit Trends

Trends by Domain

Our lives are full of numbers: Phone numbers, social security numbers, birthday dates, lottery numbers, lucky numbers... the list goes on. But, no number says more about us than our old favorite, the credit score.

Our credit scores speaks of our creditworthiness, gives potential lenders a peek into our credit history and even predicts our financial future. However, recent correlations have been drawn between credit scores and other factors... saying more about us than we'd ever imagined. Here are a few examples:

According to the Insurance Information Institute, drivers with lower credit scores file 40% more claims than drivers at the higher end of the credit scale.

Forget "red" state, "blue" state... certain states also have higher credit scores than others. The Dakotas and Wisconsin lead the country while Texas and Nevada have the lowest average credit scores.

We found another intriguing credit score correlation, email address domains. Based on a sample of 20,000 credit scores, our data shows that there is a difference of average scores based on what email service users prefer. Interestingly, Gmail and Comcast users came out the top with a higher average, while AOL and Yahoo users had the lowest average credit scores.

What does it all mean? Not much. Certainly switching email providers will not increase or decrease your credit score. It's more the case that people with a certain score have a greater likeliness to use a particular email provider. Why this happens is probably due to some demographic skew which then carries to the email domain. But that's not the point, we just thought it was interesting.

Comments

(39 Total Comments)

I have accounts on yahoo, gmail, mac, aol, comcast, and more... I like to try different things. I generally prefer yahoo, because I just like the way it functions better than the others. (I'm over 50 so maybe egyptor has a point.) But the real reason I use yahoo or gmail or .mac/.me (or even aol, if I must), is that it simply doesn't make sense to use an ISP specific email (such as comcast or sbcglobal, etc.) because if you decide to use a different service for whatever(!) reason, you then have to make sure you contact everyone you want to know of the change, which also means changing it on any websites, accounts, etc. where you have your email address for whatever reason. A techie friend pointed this out to me years ago, and it made perfect sense to me. I will always make sure I can afford and pay for my ISP. I'd give up food before that! But I won't use their email address. Sometimes I do use those addresses when I need to use an email for something that will largely be "junk" in my inbox. Then I just check them periodically.

In the past I had DSL, then I moved and DSL wasn't available there, so I had to use cable. If I had been using the ISP email, I'd have had to notify everyone, etc. What a pain. Makes more sense to use something that won't change, such as yahoo or gmail--especially since these days they are largely free with quite unlimited amounts of storage space. I advised my ~80-ish parents to do the same because they kept having to change emails when they changed ISP. (Yes, they use their computers a lot... Mom is relatively new to it, mostly email, but now they are asking about Facebook!) :-)"

ladylea1 at 5:50 pm Mar 16

E-mail address has something to do with credit scores? Hardly."

jlocato1 at 11:37 am Mar 10

Natural population biases. Nowhere do we suggest emails have anything to do with credit scores.

CK Moderator

Only old people use the email that comes with their internet provider and as the other chart shows old people have on average a higher score."

ClarkeMoyer at 11:30 am Feb 24

I agree with idontknow82, entertainment & total nonsense!Credit scores have nothing to do with email addresses! If I have a Gmail address & don't pay my bills, trust me my credit score will be down dramatically. I have Gmail, MSN & Yahoo. I used them all but Yahoo more often, why? I'm lazy & don't have all day to look at my spam!"

Marpur at 8:28 pm Feb 6

I need to increase my credit score. Should I switch to a Comcast account?"

borensm at 7:58 am Feb 2

And while you're looking at email addresses, I suggest another item to look at: email names matching users' actual legal names. For example, does a match (i.e. John Smith with an email address johnsmith@gmail.com) do better than a non-match (i.e. Sally Jones with email address of prettypinkprincess924@yahoo.com)? I'm guessing that you'll find people with what I'd call grown-up email addresses (matches) have higher credit scores than those who don't."

VizillaKarma at 12:46 pm Jan 24

That is an interesting theory.

CK Moderator

Totally disagreed. I believe more the people become accustomed to latest technologies like new emails, emails systems, online information storing systems, if one is intelligent and smart, they will be better off not to use their name matches in their emails ids. Hence the mismatch of ids could actually do better on credit score. So this basis is totally useless, with all due respect."

madcrkrplane at 1:10 am Mar 17

Funny, I found something similar in my line of work (lead generation), where leads with broadband ISP email addresses outperformed Gmail, Gmail outperformed Hotmail/MSN, and Hotmail/MSN outperformed Yahoo.

Someone who has a broadband ISP provider email address like Comcast has money to afford the service in the first place. It would be interesting to see how much or how little the variations vanish between email domains if you could just look at the users' connection speeds when checking in from non-work IP addresses."

VizillaKarma at 12:39 pm Jan 24

All I can do is shake my head in disbelief, email address domains now?? When is enough enough?

Even though I have had a auto loan and paid off 3 years and 1 month early, and then got a house loan, and then needed another 400 dollar loan. I still HATE this scummy credit system. Why are they trying to make things worse?"

idontknow82 at 2:04 pm Jan 21

This article is for entertainment. No one is using email domains to determine your credit score.

CK Moderator

702 with an @yahoo.com domain."

07kennebellg at 1:55 pm Jan 9

I used yahoo email since the 90s, even before google exist, my score is 735. I think the email comparison is interesting but no facts what so ever in the numbers."

dhoanguyen at 9:30 am Dec 20

Yeah I agree with you. And as CK says this article is totally for fun, but I suspect this throws us into some thinking (hence we are wasting time here LOL)"

madcrkrplane at 1:12 am Mar 17