A new federal law eliminates fees for getting and removing credit freezes in Texas and across the country at the three nationwide credit bureaus on September 21st. The consumer advocacy group TexPIRG recommends getting credit freezes, not the similar locks offered by the bureaus, to prevent new account identity theft.
In 2003, TexPIRG led the effort in the Texas legislature to pass one of the nation's first laws creating security freezes. However, the law required consumers to pay $10 per freeze per credit bureau, for a total of $30. In the 2017 Equifax data breach, Attorney General Ken Paxton says that 12 million Texans had their information stolen.
"It’s about time the credit bureaus stopped charging us for the right to control our own information. We didn’t give them permission to collect or sell our information in the first place," said Bay Scoggin, TexPIRG’s State Director
