the survivor alleges stems from financial abuse. (6) Deceptive and misleading marketing practices (A) The three nationwide CRAs have faced millions of dollars in fines and civil monetary penalties for deceptive practices, including enticing consumers into purchasing products and services that they may not want or need, in some instances by advertising products or services free that automatically converted into an ongoing subscription service at the regular price unless cancelled by the consumer. Codifying the duties of CRAs is an appropriate way to ensure these companies do not engage in such misleading behaviors in the future. (B) 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. (C) 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. 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) Children are much 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