Legislation expanding the requirements of an anti-identity theft bill already pending in the Senate has been introduced in the House by Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-OR).
Both measures would amend both the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Truth in Lending Act. They would credit card issuing catalogers, direct marketers, retailers, banks and other financial institutions to truncate or partially obliterate a customer's account number on a receipt.
The measures both have the title the Identity Theft Protection Act of 2001 and the bill numbers are (S-1399 and HR-3053).
Hooley's bill would go further by authorizing credit reporting agencies, at a consumer's request, to post a fraud alert in their file with a "clear and conspicuous statement...telling all prospective users of the report that the consumer does not authorize the issuance or extension of credit" in his or her name without the person's "verbal authorization."
Also it would require credit reporting agencies to provide consumers with one free copy of their credit report a year while providing them with a way to "promptly" correct wrong information in their files while reporting suspected misuse of their credit cards.
Unlike the bill introduced in the Senate last month by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Hooley's measure would require merchants to retrofit their existing credit card receipt-producing cash registers and machines to obliterate most, if not all of a person's account number by Jan. 1, 2003. And, it would require all machines made after that date to automatically truncate credit card numbers.
The Federal Trade Commission would be required by both bills to develop new rules for the handling of consumer complaints about identity theft and fraud alerts between and among credit grantors and credit reporting agencies.
Currently, there are 10 other identity theft related bills pending in Congress, four in the Senate and six in the House. With all 10 pending in various committees, none has come up on the floor of either the House or the Senate for a vote.
