CreditLock.com

Identity Theft, resulting in about 9 Million victims annually, has become America's number one crime. As consumers expressed their concerns, most States introduced Credit Freeze laws allowing consumers to lock down access to their Credit Report. Although such laws are now available to more than 67% of the total U.S. population, they still lag in the Deep South.

In the Deep South region, consisting of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, only Florida and Louisiana have effective Credit Freeze laws available to both Identity Theft victims, as well as non-victims. Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, with a total population of 18.2 Million residents (consisting of 6% of the total U.S. population) still have no Credit Freeze laws. Meanwhile, Mississippi has only recently made such law effective, but only available to Identity Theft victims.

Georgia, with the second largest population in the Deep South after Florida, is an Identity Theft high risk State. According to the FTC, Georgia ranked seventh in the nation in Identity Theft complaints per 100,000 people in 2006. Given such poor record on Identity Theft protection, it may seem surprising that Georgia still has no effective Credit Freeze laws.

However, given that Georgia is home to Equifax, one of the 3 Credit Bureaus, some critics may not be surprised that Georgia is lagging in adopting a Credit Freeze law. Such critics believe that Credit Bureaus do not like Credit Freeze laws because such laws may cut into their profits generated from selling Credit Report information. Such analysis may prove short sided because reducing Credit Report fraud is indeed in the long term interest of the Credit Bureaus. Credit Freeze laws reduce Credit Report Fraud by allowing consumers to lock down access to their Credit Report, hence disabling criminals from opening unauthorized new credit and loan accounts in their victims' names.

According to some sources such as Wikipedia, the Deep South is categorized by a "cultural and geographic subregion of the American South, differentiated from the Old South as being the post colonial expansion of Southern States in the antebellum period." As a matter of a fact, it seems that Florida is sometimes excluded from the Deep South (despite being the southernmost state), due to migration into South Florida from other regions. It certainly is not conclusive whether such  slow adoption of Credit Freeze in the Deep South is merely coincidental, or reflective of such "cultural" distinction (whereby cultural distinctions would entail differing priorities, processes, agendas and ways of doing things).

Despite the slow adoption of Credit Freeze laws in the Deep South, it is inevitable that such laws will ultimately take hold. An examination of the list of Credit Freeze states clearly shows how such list has steadily grown during the past several years. An interactive color-coded U.S. map, depicting Credit Freeze availability in the U.S. (and related kits for placing such freeze) is available at http://www.creditlock.com/creditlockdownpro.html . Such map has constantly evolved during the past several months, depicting more and more Green colored states (Green is used to depict states where Credit Freeze is available to both Identity theft victims and non-victims). In addition, the spectrum of colors seem to continue to grow on the map, depicting expected future effective dates of new credit freeze laws in states such as Utah, Nebraska, Indiana, Maryland, Tennessee and Arkansas.