Most states have legislated credit report freeze statutes in the last few years as a tool consumers can use to protect themselves from identity theft. Now California courts have ruled one agency may ignore a freeze placed by a consumer and issue a report of that consumer's personal information to any landlord requesting it.
U.D. Registry is now legally allowed to provide information about prospective tenants to landlords even if the prospective tenant has placed a "freeze" on his or her credit report. The report may include social security numbers, previous addresses, tax information, rental records and judgments all of which could be used by an identity thief. The freeze statutes were enacted to allow consumers to protect this very same information, however the California Appellate court ruled most of this information was already available in public records.
U.D. Registry successfully convinced the court that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America protects the reporting service it provides.
Will this ruling impact identity theft? Will other states bring similar cases and will those courts rule similarly?
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 7:19 am and is filed under Bankruptcy News and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.