duties is an appropriate way to ensure that these companies never revert back to such misleading tactics. (E) Given the ubiquitous use of consumer reports in consumers’ lives and the fact that consumers’ participation in the credit reporting system is involuntary, CRAs should also prioritize providing consumers with the effective means to safeguard their personal and financial information and improve their credit standing, rather than seeking to exploit consumers’ concerns and confusion about credit reporting and scoring, to boost their companies’ profits. (F) Vulnerable consumers, who have legitimate concerns about the security of their personal and financial information, deserve clear, accurate, and transparent information about the credit reporting tools that may be available to them, such as fraud alerts and freezes. (7) Protections for consumers’ credit information (A) Despite heightened awareness, incidents of ID theft continue to rise. In February 2015, the FTC reported that ID theft was the top consumer complaint that it received for the 15th consecutive year. As these incidents increase, consumers experience significant financial loss and emotional distress from the inability to safeguard effectively and inexpensively their credit information from bad actors. (B) According to a Carnegie Mellon study, children are 50 times more likely than adults to have their identities stolen. Child identities are valuable to thieves because most children do not have existing files, and their parents may not notice fraudulent activity until their child applies for a student loan, a job, or a credit card. As a result, the fraudulent activity of the bad actors may go undetected for years. (C) Despite the increasing incidents of children’s ID theft, parents who want to proactively prevent their children from having their identity stolen, may not be able to do so. Only one of the three nationwide CRAs currently allows parents from any State to set up a freeze for a minor child. At the other two nationwide CRAs, parents can