Champion of consumers Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bill today that is aimed at cracking down on Equifax—the consumer credit reporting agency at the center of a giant personal data breach where hackers accessed personal information of up to 143 million Americans.
The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, according to Bloomberg, will give consumers the ability to freeze their credit for free. This would prevent companies like Equifax from charging consumers for freezing and unfreezing access to their credit files.
“I am troubled by this attack—described as ‘one of the largest risks to personally sensitive information in recent years’—and by the fact that it represents the third recent instance of a data breach of Equifax or its subsidiaries that has endangered American’s personal information,” Warren wrote in a letter to Equifax chairman and chief executive Richard Smith, Reuters reports.
Equifax (EFX) shares have shed more than 32% to $96.66 since it disclosed the personal data breach on Sept. 7—one of the largest in the United States’ history.