<prompt> Human: Two days I posted How effective are credit freezes in actually preventing identity theft? It got virtually no attention, and I was disappointed, because its an important question.A credit freeze will not 100 prevent identity theft. PINs, like SSNs, can only be so secure. This discovery on the Experian site is proof of it.While a freeze will certainly will make things more difficult for hackers, it is not 100 a guarantee of protection.Assistant: this is the most amazing display of incompetence with respect to insecure website design. it just keeps building like a snowball rolling downhill Human: Since credit reporting has been a virtual monopoly since the introduction of the concept of credit, this is the price we pay as a society for not allowing free competition in our markets.I understand that the free market probably doesnt have a need for hundreds of reporting agencies, but I do believe that there isnt enough competition to force competent security practices.  <response>: Id rather turn that all the way around. These are third party companies, they should not have access to our private information. If we absolutely have to have a centralized service for this it should be the responsibility of the government. But since we seem to be able to manage medical records between our doctors and hospitals we should be able to do the same with financial information. 