I can understand the impulse to want Equifax punished for getting hacked and releasing all of this information. But I think these credit bureaus are small fry c

I can understand the impulse to want Equifax punished for getting hacked and releasing all of this information. But I think these credit bureaus are small fry compared the size of the companies that are at the root of the problem: banks and other entities that make loans. The reason most people don't like the credit bureaus are the fear of "identity theft" not the spread of truthful information about themselves. A bank makes a loan to a fraudster who is impersonating you. The fraudster defaults on the loan and the the bank tells a lie about you to the credit bureau, which gets spread around and hurts you in many ways. If we called this situation "bank slander" or "bank libel", the focus would be on who is creating the problem: the bank with its lie. Create high enough penalties for banks reporting false loan defaults and "identity theft" will disappear as the banks become more cautious of fraudsters. This is unlikely to happen as banks are concentrated and powerful institutions. "To big to fail" I believe is the term. I don't think the credit bureaus themselves are that influential in Congress but the banks want them and will lobby on their behalf. It would be interesting to know how much money the banks get from people illegally each year from people paying off fraudsters debts to clear their credit reports from the false default reports from banks.