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[iLIE]

Thank you lenders.I'm now debt free because i never even made the first payment on my March 2008 loan

http://www.prosper.com/lend/listing.aspx?listingID=281004

New lenders,please take into account that someone paying off CC with a 36% loan doesn't intend to repay you.

[christoofar215]

   
Q: What accounts for the $55k in revolving credit? Is this all credit cards? If so, what drove the amount so high? Also, how are you lucky enough to have no housing expense? Are you living with your parents? Thanks! -nature_girl

A: I, unfortunately, got into a gambling habit years ago and have really only been paying interest only payments on credit cards at 23%. No, I do not live with my parents; my husband pays all bills, and has no knowledge of my credit cards. Yes, it is all credit card debt. I just want to consolidate and hopefully have a lower rate. Thanks! (Feb-18-2008)


She took your money and ran off to Atlantic City!   


Hint #2:   Tell lenders, who have money, that you have a gambling problem.   At least two lenders did catch on to this.

[christoofar215]

Bama, did you see my thread in the Developer's forum?


Another feature I think I want to add... word detection and highlighting for suspect words... such as:


"God"
"Jesus"
"God Bless"
"Working Capital"
"Back Taxes"
"Bankruptcy (BK)"
"...for a Church..."
"Repossession"
...


You can add your own suspect words to the plugin, too.    They would stick out in the description like a sore thumb.


Since the DOM is editable, I can insert dynamic HTML anywhere in the listing page... and even make it look like it's part of the listing.... how about a nice table right under the description that has the "Lenders' Comments" in it?

[ira01]

We can add our own features to Prosper, and Prosper won't even know about it.   Call it "Prosper For The Rest Of Us"

You do realize that Prosper employees regularly read this board, right?  In fact, one of the fastest and most reliable ways to bring something to Prosper's attention is to post about it here.   

[christoofar215]

We can add our own features to Prosper, and Prosper won't even know about it.   Call it "Prosper For The Rest Of Us"

You do realize that Prosper employees regularly read this board, right?  In fact, one of the fastest and most reliable ways to bring something to Prosper's attention is to post about it here.   

(removed the shilling)

Seriously though, besides what Prosper thinks... what do you think about a browser plugin?    I don't know what Prosper's reaction would be [but their reaction to Prosperreport is a clue; maybe they learned from the Dec 24 PC Response letter, dunno)...

either way, I'm not interested right now in Prosper's potential reaction.... I'm more interested in knowing whether or not this would be worth doing--i.e. the work would be useful to you.


As far as legal goes, there's a few claims Prosper could try to make (and the rebuttals)

- It defaces our site   [ Defense:  People know damn well what the plugin does.   They clicked the disclaimer knowing what it does, and asked to download it by searching for it, going past the EULA, and installing it.   Since Im only writing for Firefox... they can look at their browser population and see how many lenders stop coming to the site in IE and switch to Mozilla]

- Plagiarism  [ See what happened with prosperreport.   This is a community enhancement.   It's not modifying Prosper functionality in any way.   All it is doing is adding additional data to ONE of their ASPX pages when a lender pulls it up on their computer ]

- Hacking [ Plugin doesn't talk to Prosper.   It has its own database outside Prosper which Prosper doesn't own or control ]

- Copyright/Trademark infringement   [ The plugin won't be branded to the Prosper identity, and will have no affiliation with PMI, I'll spell that out in the EULA ]

- Attempt to Destroy business  [  Nope.   People who don't download the plugin will behave as nothing is going on.   There are already other places (.org is an example) where lender behavior has changed--for the better--because lenders can communicate with each other freely about borrower activity.    This is a free enhancement product which allows Prosper lenders to scrutinize a Prosper product Prosper is offering, before they buy it.    If Prosper is upset that they are offering a shitty product/service, then they should do something to better it so lenders WILL want to give them money.  ]

- Violates TOS of Prosper.   [  Nope.   .org isn't a TOS violation of Prosper, and neither would this plugin.  ]

[Senator]

I am a good candidate for this loan because… I have never defaulted on a payment, never been late on a payment, just want to consolidate and make less different payments.

There's a first time for everything!

[ira01]

We can add our own features to Prosper, and Prosper won't even know about it.   Call it "Prosper For The Rest Of Us"

You do realize that Prosper employees regularly read this board, right?  In fact, one of the fastest and most reliable ways to bring something to Prosper's attention is to post about it here.   

(removed the shilling)

Seriously though, besides what Prosper thinks... what do you think about a browser plugin?    I don't know what Prosper's reaction would be [but their reaction to Prosperreport is a clue; maybe they learned from the Dec 24 PC Response letter, dunno)...

either way, I'm not interested right now in Prosper's potential reaction.... I'm more interested in knowing whether or not this would be worth doing--i.e. the work would be useful to you.

Well, it wouldn't be useful to me, since I'm not lending and I've been banned (I do have access to two other Prosper accounts, so I could lend if I wanted to, but for the reasons I've spelled out at length in other threads, I have no desire to lend given Prosper's current management).  But I think it sounds like a useful idea for lenders who are still lending (of course if the only likely way to learn of it is from here there won't be much of a market, since most lenders here have stopped lending). 

By the way, someone else here (Retirement99 or something like that) has a browser extension (for IE, I believe, but maybe Firefox too) that has some similar functionality (including the ability to make notes on listings, I believe), but it doesn't do much of what you've outlined.  You might want to check that out.

As for Prosper's reaction, I think it will be silence.  Prosperreport was really a very different situation.  It no doubt REALLY pissed Prosper off that their attempt to completely delete their old forums was ruined by 112233.  Prosper really wanted to eliminate all of that history, and they undoubtedly thought they had (until prosperreport showed up shortly after Prosper eliminated .com).  Moreover, Prosper's legal claims were (foolishly) based on the domain name including "Prosper."  Although this is not legal advice, I doubt Prosper could make any legal claim against your idea that would be even as good as their claims against prosperreport (which, as we all know, were pretty crappy themselves).  If I were you, however, I would make it noticeable that your plugin was affecting the page view wherever it was (some sort of "added information supplied by stampinator, not affiliated with Prosper Marketplace, Inc." legend displayed on each page modified by your plugin).  That way, Prosper can't complain that you are fooling users who may not themselves have installed the plugin (such as on a shared computer).

[Xenon481]

We can add our own features to Prosper, and Prosper won't even know about it.   Call it "Prosper For The Rest Of Us"

You do realize that Prosper employees regularly read this board, right?  In fact, one of the fastest and most reliable ways to bring something to Prosper's attention is to post about it here.   

(removed the shilling)

Seriously though, besides what Prosper thinks... what do you think about a browser plugin?    I don't know what Prosper's reaction would be [but their reaction to Prosperreport is a clue; maybe they learned from the Dec 24 PC Response letter, dunno)...

either way, I'm not interested right now in Prosper's potential reaction.... I'm more interested in knowing whether or not this would be worth doing--i.e. the work would be useful to you.


As far as legal goes, there's a few claims Prosper could try to make (and the rebuttals)

- It defaces our site   [ Defense:  People know damn well what the plugin does.   They clicked the disclaimer knowing what it does, and asked to download it by searching for it, going past the EULA, and installing it.   Since Im only writing for Firefox... they can look at their browser population and see how many lenders stop coming to the site in IE and switch to Mozilla]

- Plagiarism  [ See what happened with prosperreport.   This is a community enhancement.   It's not modifying Prosper functionality in any way.   All it is doing is adding additional data to ONE of their ASPX pages when a lender pulls it up on their computer ]

- Hacking [ Plugin doesn't talk to Prosper.   It has its own database outside Prosper which Prosper doesn't own or control ]

- Copyright/Trademark infringement   [ The plugin won't be branded to the Prosper identity, and will have no affiliation with PMI, I'll spell that out in the EULA ]

- Attempt to Destroy business  [  Nope.   People who don't download the plugin will behave as nothing is going on.   There are already other places (.org is an example) where lender behavior has changed--for the better--because lenders can communicate with each other freely about borrower activity.    This is a free enhancement product which allows Prosper lenders to scrutinize a Prosper product Prosper is offering, before they buy it.    If Prosper is upset that they are offering a shitty product/service, then they should do something to better it so lenders WILL want to give them money.  ]

- Violates TOS of Prosper.   [  Nope.   .org isn't a TOS violation of Prosper, and neither would this plugin.  ]

If you look at http://www.prospers.org/wiki/tools you will see that we have had a number of Greasemonkey scripts and there is also an IE Plugin that have all been well known about (even by Prosper.com employees) that have modified the look and feel of .com pages and added significant functionality.  .com has never come to anybody with any problems about this.

[mjerryfirst]

Thank you lenders.I'm now debt free because i never even made the first payment on my March 2008 loan

http://www.prosper.com/lend/listing.aspx?listingID=281004

New lenders,please take into account that someone paying off CC with a 36% loan doesn't intend to repay you.

The lesson here is that lenders should only lend if the resulting loan will improve the borrower's financial situation by lowering their effective interest rate

[JoeyTurks]

   
Q: What accounts for the $55k in revolving credit? Is this all credit cards? If so, what drove the amount so high? Also, how are you lucky enough to have no housing expense? Are you living with your parents? Thanks! -nature_girl

A: I, unfortunately, got into a gambling habit years ago and have really only been paying interest only payments on credit cards at 23%. No, I do not live with my parents; my husband pays all bills, and has no knowledge of my credit cards. Yes, it is all credit card debt. I just want to consolidate and hopefully have a lower rate. Thanks! (Feb-18-2008)


She took your money and ran off to Atlantic City!   


Hint #2:   Tell lenders, who have money, that you have a gambling problem.   At least two lenders did catch on to this.

The part that gets me is "my husband pays all bills, and has no knowledge of my credit cards." Now THAT'S a healthy marriage, not to mention a giant red flag.

[Trekbiker]

whoa...      55K CC gambling debt that husband doesnt know about and she ADMITS in the Q&A that she is not going to use this loan to pay towards it and is instead going to add to her total debt by fixing the kids teeth???!!!?!

55% DTI...  check
55K revolving debt (not Heloc.. CC!!)...     check
7 inquiries...    check
E grade...    check
35% Prosper loan to pay 23% CC?? (but then admits its not for CC payment)...   check
deceitful liar with a gambling problem...     check

this one seems borderline fraud to me

[christoofar215]

ira/Xenon thanks for the 411.

Yeah I figured I had something to build on with Public Citizen's reply to Prosper re: 112233/report.com.   I'm looking over GreaseMonkey's work and I think the best course of action is to suck down Prosper's database so I can build the lookup tables I want/need and also build an outside web service for making shared outside comments appear inserted into listing pages directly.

I can colorize the outside information in pink to contrast ProsperBlue so the user knows the data is coming outside of Prosper and has nothing to do with PMI, Inc., and comments/assessments about the listings are the poster's own opinions--not the opinions of Prosper Marketplace.

I think to get around the problem of lenders not finding the plugin is to just push the plugin to SourceForge and let it be Googled and register it with Mozilla so you can go into any Firefox browser and install the plugin directly from Tools->Addons and searching for "Prosper".

This will dovetail nicely with my original intention to build an Apple iPhone OSX app for managing my Prosper account.