Yes. Stories like this get in the news all the time.
The fact is that most people are so bad at interviewing compared to people who are good at interviewing that people who are good at interviewing are in demand.
Absolutely, if you're a contractor, you're can easily go radio silent and just sit there doing nothing until someone gives you a specific task to work on. You're generally not part of planning or engineering, and pure implementation IME is only like 1/4 of an FTEs time.
I wonder what kind of contracting that is. Me, and others in my team, proactively improve things if we run out of tasks. I work all the hours that I bill, anything else seems like fraud.
Some companies, Google being one of them, allow you to opt-out of sharing any data with Equifax. Perhaps there's a more 'global' way to prevent that data sharing, too
The fact is that most people are so bad at interviewing compared to people who are good at interviewing that people who are good at interviewing are in demand.