In the wake of the Equifax data breach, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Brian Schatz of Hawaii have introduced legislation in the United States Senate entitled the Freedom from Equifax Exploitation Act or FREE Act. Someone was obviously pretty adept when coming up with this acronym.
If passed, the bill would create a federal standard for credit freezes and require that they be able to be done and lifted at no cost to consumers at any time. It also would require consumers to be refunded any charges incurred in freezing their credit reports at the other credit reporting agencies in response to the Equifax breach. In addition it provides for consumers to receive more free copies of their credit reports.
TIPS
Here is a link to the full bill.
Click to access 2017_09_15_Freedom_from_Equifax_Exploitation_Act_Text.pdf
If you support this bill, you should contact your Senators. Here is a link for doing so.
https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
Presently this bill stands little chance of passage, however if the public is heard, hopefully the laws will change to better protect our privacy and security in regard to credit reports.