Credit Freeze Law struck down

In California, notorious tenant blacklisting service U.D. Registry sued to strike down a consumer credit freeze law on first amendment grounds. They won. Credit & collections world quotes lawyer (and son of the founder of U.D. Registry) Michael Saltz predicting that the case will serve as a precedent to strike down other state credit freeze laws.

I don't personally buy the legal interpretations here, but the courts have ruled and it looks like the end of consumer credit freezes, which are only just being rolled out in many states. (It just went into effect in New York on Nov. 1st.) There's been resistance to credit freezes from credit bureaus all along, and this new ruling shifts things squarely in their favor.

I don't like this development one bit. Particularly troubling is this paragraph:

“If you are reporting facts on file, and they are true and accurate, the state cannot touch you. The credit reporting industry cannot be singled out” under law, he adds, especially as they don’t issue credit. The onus to prevent identity theft and fraud lies with credit grantors, he says.

This isn't about "the state." It's about our right to protect ourselves from fraud. If the onus is on credit grantors, and we are that much more powerless to protect our identities from thieves, then how do we avoid becoming victims? With a credit freeze, we could force them not to grant instant credit, but that's being struck down. So where does this leave us? At the mercy of credit bureaus, credit grantors, and identity theives.

Comments

[Alex]

I'd have to say that the turn around in my finances was when I forced myself to sit down and use Quicken to track my money. Between that and not carrying cash on me, by using a debit card, I went 180 degrees in less than a year and got out of much of my debt.

Alex