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Your <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/whos-looking-your-credit-report-12805604" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">credit file</a> says a lot about you. For millions of Americans, though, it says almost nothing.
Ashley Knight, SVP of product management at <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/experian-reveals-why-americans-are-borrowing-more-than-ever-before" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Experian</a>, told TheStreet <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Roundtable</a> at Money20/20 in Las Vegas that those consumers are <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/new-fico-credit-scoring-method-to-help-unscorable-borrowers-get-loans-13139040" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">hard for lenders to place</a>.
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 “There are many thin file or no credit consumers that are out there today, and they can be hard to identify in the credit ecosystem because we’ve not seen them before,” she said.
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Experian has cited figures showing nearly <a href="https://thepaypers.com/fintech/news/experian-launches-cash-flow-consumer-reporting-agency-in-the-us" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">one in five consumers lacks access to credit or has damaged credit</a>. Knight’s answer is to look past the credit file to something nearly everyone has: an email address.
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<h2 id="the-atdata-acquisition">The AtData acquisition</h2>
<a href="https://pulse2.com/experian-acquires-email-identity-company-atdata/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Experian bought AtData</a>, a company known for its email insights technology, in February of 2026. The deal adds more than 10 billion email addresses worldwide to Experian’s data. AtData has spent over 25 years helping major brands and Fortune 500 companies validate first-party data.
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 “I think we undervalue how much we use email,” Knight said.
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Checking into hotels, getting into conferences, boarding flights, and much more require email addresses. That everyday footprint makes email “a highly predictive identifier to a consumer, especially where there is no credit data that exists,” she said.
<h2 id="more-news">More news:</h2>
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</ul>
<h2 id="why-a-new-email-is-a-red-flag">Why a new email is a red flag</h2>
The same data works against fraudsters as well. Knight said signals like when an address was first seen, how often it shows up, and whether it lines up with a person’s IP or postal address “can predict fraud as well.”
AtData’s network processes over 150 billion deterministic signals every month. The deal extends Experian’s push into fraud prevention, following its <a href="https://www.experianplc.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/experian-acquires-kyc360-to-boost-fraud-and-financial-crime-solu" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">October 2025 purchase of regtech firm KYC360</a>.
Knight said the key is how long this data has been collected and analyzed for. 25 years of data is a real moat that cannot be replicated easily.
That’s why the biggest warning sign is an absence.
<blockquote>
 “When we see an email come through for the very first time, we’ve never seen it in our database, that is a key indicator of risk,” Knight said.
</blockquote>
A scammer can <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/wells-fargo-sounds-the-alarm-on-ai-powered-scams" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">make an email look legitimate.</a> What they can’t easily fake is decades of history behind it.

No credit score, no problem. Experian says your email address can vouch for you.

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