2006 June 14 | Wheatworks Blog: Financial Matters

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Congress is not acting to protect your identity

6/14/2006, 5:08 pm

Listening to Marketplace on NPR this evening I heard an incredibly outrageous story: “Thawing Identity Theft Protection“. It’s an unbelievable jaw dropper.

Congress is considering a bill that will prevent you from placing a freeze on your credit until after you have become a victim of identity theft.

It’s so unbelievable, I’ll write it again: Congress is considering a bill that will prevent you from placing a freeze on your credit until after you have become a victim of identity theft.

Of course, the financial industry is lobbying for this federal pre-emptive strike against consumer security. If passed, the federal law will overrule the more than a dozen states that have passed laws permitting citizens to place a credit freeze on their accounts.

Why is this important an important story?

What should be an obvious example to Congress: 25 million veterans’ private data was recently stolen from the personal home of a Veterans Administration employee. With this information (which includes names and social security numbers) any thief can steal the identify of the veterans and open credit accounts with the stolen information. These 25 MILLION potential victims of identity theft will not be able to protect themselves if Congress passes this law! And you won’t either.

What does the US Congress do in this case? Well they’ve said a lot of strong words about how bad it is that veterans’ data is stolen.

But then, at the same time, Congress has cozied up to the financial industry lobby by considering a bill that makes it impossible for these 25 million veterans (and any other citizen) from proactively freezing their credit so that the stolen information cannot be used against them.

If this sounds as foolish to you as it does to me, contact your Congressperson and tell them you want to be able to protect yourself from identity theft. Ask them to vote against any bill that prevents you from freezing your credit.

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