Credit Agencies Working To Keep Your Info Available Far And Wide

It's no surprise at all that the big credit reporting agencies are pushing hard to get new laws put in place that would wipe out certain state laws that try to give consumers more control over their credit reports. At one end, the credit agencies do have a legitimate argument: having fifty different state laws, each of which with very different requirements, is a bureaucratic nightmare. Standardizing any law across all fifty states makes sense. However, the details suggest that the state-by-state issue is the least of the credit firms real worries -- and they're actually hoping to use the law to stop people from being able to "lock" their own credit reports (which some recent state laws allow). The agencies are worried, of course, that locked credit reports will greatly harm their business -- and they could be right. However, this wouldn't be such an issue if the agencies had done a better job protecting people's information in the first place. Remember, of course, this is the same industry that last year claimed it was "un-American" to let people know what info the agencies had on themselves, in order to make sure it was accurate. So far, these agencies have shown little action in really protecting people, and so it's tough to take their reasons for pushing this legislation at face value.