It is unacceptable that Equifax — one of the gatekeepers to our financial success — would leave itself vulnerable to an attack of the magnitude we saw in 2017. And after the Equifax hack became front page news, it was revealed that the credit bureau could likely have prevented the breach — and it certainly could have done a much better job helping consumers protect themselves in the aftermath.

If you haven’t taken steps to protect yourself, you should. But in most states, protecting your credit will require you to pay a fee, and jump through hoops to ensure all three credit agencies protect your data.

We shouldn’t have to rely on firms like Equifax to protect our financial information, and we shouldn’t have to pay them to fix their mistakes. It should be our legal right to protect ourselves from identity theft.

The best way to prevent new account identity theft is to freeze your credit report. When you want credit, you can temporarily unfreeze your report. Our network helped pass the first state freeze law in California 15 years ago, and now we’re supporting legislation that would set free freezes for all Americans as the floor of protection. We’re mobilizing support for the FREE Act in Congress, which would give all Americans the ability to freeze and unfreeze their credit at the three major credit bureaus at no cost.

Staff in our state network are working on free credit freeze bills in six states, including Massachusetts, Illinois and California, and we are working in two other states to improve their existing credit freeze laws.

Our staff are ready to educate, organize and advocate on behalf of the public interest to make this happen, but we need your help.