Delaware General Assembly

Lieu/Substituted 5/19/06

The General Assembly has ended, the current status is the final status.

SS 1 for SB 109

5/5/05

Venables

Sen. Sokola, Connor, Still

AN ACT TO AMEND TITLE 6 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE CLEAN CREDIT AND IDENTITY THEFT PROTECTION ACT.

This Act creates a series of consumer protections for credit consumers in Delaware. This Act is based upon the Model Clean Credit and Identity Theft Protection Act published by the State Public Interest Research Groups and Consumers Union (PIRGs). The terms of this Act compliment the terms of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. Pursuant to this Act, whenever a consumer receives a summary of rights pursuant to the federal Act, the consumer must also receive written notice of his or her rights under this Act. One of the rights created by this Act is the right to have a “security freeze” put in place with each of the major credit reporting agencies in the Country through which the consumer’s credit information may only be disclosed to a third party with the consumer’s prior consent. Under the terms of this Act, if a person wishes to receive a information about a consumer that has been frozen at the consumer’s request, the agency may tell the person that a security freeze is in place, but may only release the information after it receives written authorization from the consumer. This Act also establishes a method to address potential identity thefts. Pursuant to the terms of this Act, if a person learns or reasonably suspects they have been the victim of identity theft, s/he is entitled to have a police report that describes the details of the theft and to have a court of competent jurisdiction make expedited factual findings of his or her innocence in criminal matters where the person who stole his or her identity is being charged under his or her name. In the event of such an expedited factual finding, the court must provide the person with written documentation of the finding and the Delaware Department of Justice must keep the information on file for future reference. In order to encourage self-monitoring of consumer credit information by the consumer, this Act mandates the release of certain information to the consumer by credit reporting agencies. The agencies may charge up to $2.00 per request for the first 12 requests in a calendar year and up to $8.00 for each subsequent request during a calendar year. These charges may only be levied where the federal law does not prohibit them. General violations of this Act constitute a class B misdemeanor and are criminally punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 or up to 60 days imprisonment, or both. These violations may also be pursued in civil court and relief available under this Act include fines of up to $3,000 plus an award of damages equal to actual damages or $5,000 whichever is greater, plus reasonable court costs and attorney’s fees. In the event a credit reporting agency violates a security freeze put in place pursuant to this Act by releasing frozen information without the prior consent of the affected consumer, the affected consumer is entitled to all of the following: Notification within five business days of the release of the information, including specificity as to the information released and the third party recipient of the information. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. File a complaint with the Delaware Department of Justice. In a civil action against the consumer reporting agency recover: injunctive relief to prevent or restrain further violation of the security freeze, and/or a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed $10,000 for each violation plus any damages available under other civil laws, and reasonable expenses, court costs, investigative costs, and attorney’s fees.

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Takes effect upon being signed into law

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