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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

1 Year After Equifax Data Breach, Here's Everything You Need To Know

One year after announcing the biggest data breach in history, Equifax still hasn’t been held accountable or provided the information and tools consumers need to protect themselves. Since Equifax won’t help protect consumers, MontPIRG is stepping in.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

The Facebook Data Breach: What You Need to Know and What You Should Do | Ed Mierzwinski

This guest post from Nathan Acks of the State PIRG Internet Security team offers background on the latest Facebook breach and what you can do.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Consumer Protection

U.S. PIRG response to reports of Facebook security breach

Facebook announced today that earlier this week, "attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As”, a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts."

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Ten Years After Lehman, Lessons of Financial Collapse Ignored, Not Forgotten | Ed Mierzwinski

Ten years ago this weekend the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers marked the massive financial collapse of 2008. Millions of Americans lost homes, jobs and trillions of dollars in retirement savings. Today, the financial collapse hasn't been forgotten, it's being ignored by Congress and Wall Street.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Latest Trojan Horse Data Breach Bill (HR6743-Luetkemeyer) Could Be Called "Equifax Protection Act" | Ed Mierzwinski

On Thursday, 13 September, the House Financial Services Committee is to consider the latest in a long series of data security and data breach bills that Congress takes up at the request of the banks. These Trojan Horse bills come riding in with few, if any, protections riding in the saddle, but massive elimination of stronger state laws hidden in the belly of the beasts. The proposal, HR6743, the Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (Luetkemeyer (MO)), might also be called the “Equifax Protection Act.”

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Transportation

As electric cars revolutionize the vehicle market, new study helps cities address infrastructure and parking challenges

With electric vehicles (EVs) hitting U.S. streets in record numbers, a new study by U.S. PIRG Education Fund, PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center and Frontier Group highlights best practices to help local officials make their cities as EV-friendly as possible. The new report, “Plugging In: Readying America’s Cities for the Arrival of Electric Vehicles,” includes local and state data about the projected number of electric cars expected on the road in coming years, and how cities can accommodate these new EVs with enough places to park and recharge.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

Consumer Advocates Explain Crucial Public Interest in a Strong CFPB

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) independence from external political influence is crucial to the agency’s mission of protecting consumers, 10 groups, including U.S. PIRG Education Fund, told a U.S. appellate court today in an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The groups are supporting the appeal of CFPB Deputy Director Leandra English in her lawsuit against the President and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney over the proper leadership of the Bureau in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Financial Reform

Joint Statement: Transfer of CFPB Consumer Response Unit Offers No Clear Benefit

This week, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, now also acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, made several concerning "administrative changes," including to move the Consumer Response Office, responsible for handling consumer complaints and managing the Bureau's public consumer complaint database, which U.S. PIRG has relied on for 11 (so far) analytic studies of the consumer financial marketplace. We issued the following joint statement, along with Americans for Financial Reform and Consumer Action.

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News Release | U.S.PIRG | Financial Reform

Statement on Equifax’s Lock & Alert Product Announcement

Our statement on the today's launch by Equifax of Lock & Alert, a service that will let consumers lock and unlock their Equifax credit reports indefinitely for free to stop new account identity theft. This service, similar to state mandated credit freezes, only blocks access to Equifax credit reports, not credit reports at the other two bureaus, Experian and TransUnion. U.S. PIRG's advice: Blocking access to your credit reports at all three national credit bureaus remains the best action consumers can take after the Equifax breach, whether they were affected by it or not. 

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Financial Reform

Statement of U.S. PIRG On Court Ruling Upholding Constitutionality of CFPB Leadership Structure

Here is our statement on today's decision by the full D.C. Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, upholding the constitutionality of the Consumer Bureau's single-director structure. We had filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief in support of that position. The decision is a big victory for consumers.

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Consumer Protection, Financial Reform

Ten Reasons Why We Need the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Now

This report outlines predatory financial practices that hurt consumers and helped collapse the economy, costing us eight million jobs, millions of foreclosed homes and trillions of dollars in lost home and retirement values. It explains these and other emerging problems as “10 Reasons We Need The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Now.”

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Health Care

Building a Better Health Care Marketplace

The states need strong, competitive exchanges that live up to the promise of a better health care marketplace.

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Report | Consumer Protection

Big Banks, Bigger Fees

Since Congress largely deregulated consumer deposit (checking and savings) accounts beginning in the early 1980s, the PIRGs have tracked bank deposit account fee changes and documented the banks’ long-term strategy to raise fees, invent new fees and make it harder to avoid fees. 

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Safe Energy

Unacceptable Risk: Two Decades of “Close Calls,” Leaks and Other Problems at U.S. Nuclear Reactors

American nuclear power plants are not immune to the types of natural disasters, mechanical failures, human errors, and losses of critical electric power supplies that have characterized major nuclear accidents such as the one at Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. Indeed, at several points over the last 20 years, American nuclear power plants have experienced “close calls” that could have led to damage to the reactor core and the subsequent release of large amounts of radiation.

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Report | U.S. Public Interest Research Group and National Taxpayers Union | Budget

Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide to Reduce Spending

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and National Taxpayers Union (NTU) have joined together to propose a list of 30 specific recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers over $600 billion in total by 2015, the target date for the Fiscal Commission to reduce our publicly-held debt-to- GDP ratio to a more sustainable level of 60 percent.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

What You Haven’t Heard About that Bad Banking Bill; It Preempts State Identity Theft Reforms | Mike Litt

We're opposing S2155 on the Senate floor this week. The main message against in the media has been that it puts mortgage borrowers at risk of bad loans and racial discrimination. Worse, it puts our economy at risk by removing important bank regulator tools to rein in risky practices by giant and big banks. For that matter, it could even allow risky practices to migrate to community banks. But there's more. The bill's so-called consumer protection provisions intended to offset its rollbacks, including its free credit freeze, aren't that good and preempt stronger state actions.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Credit Bureaus Let Wrongdoers Run Amok, Disrupt Mortgage-Seekers | Ed Mierzwinski

In the run-up to the 2006-2007 mortgage bubble that led to the total collapse of our financial system in 2008, the Big 3 credit bureaus sold products known as "trigger lists" that aided sketchy mortgage companies in disrupting consumer transactions. The lists were "credited" with making a bad situation worse. Guess what? Longtime syndicated housing columnist Ken Harney warns: "they're back."

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Massive Rollback of Dodd-Frank Wall St. Protections Hits Senate Floor, Our Opposition Letter to S2155

We've been working hard to oppose a bill to weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. You remember, that's the law passed in the wake of the second-biggest financial collapse in our history, caused by Wall Street recklessness. The bill has massive support from both Wall Street and community banks. S2155 is on the Senate floor this week. It has enough Democratic votes to pass, but consumer champions are fighting back. Read our opposition letter.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Why The Legal Dispute Over the Leadership of the CFPB Matters | Michael Landis

There’s an important legal fight happening right now over the temporary leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And U.S. PIRG Education Fund, along with nine other consumer advocacy groups, just weighed in with a friend-of-the-court brief against the President and his pick. Find out why the Consumer Bureau needs to be independent in this blog entry about why the legal dispute over the CFPB matters.

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Blog Post | Transportation

To Build A 21st Century America, Start Here | Jeff Robinson

The stakes in the current infrastructure debate are high. But what matters most is not the size of any federal infrastructure package, nor how it is financed, nor even how many jobs it creates in the coming years. What matters most is building the infrastructure that will enable America to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund

Investigation of E. Coli outbreak in lettuce reveals need for more protections

The FDA investigation reinforces that our food isn't nearly as safe as it should be. This time, more than 60 people got sick from salads, probably because a company failed to sanitize the water used to grow its romaine lettuce.

Report | MontPIRG Citizen Advocate

Driving Into Debt

In much of America, access to a car is all but required to hold a job or lead a full and vibrant life. Generations of car-centric transportation policies – including lavish spending on roads, sprawl-inducing land use policies, and meager support for other modes of transportation – have left millions of Americans fully dependent on cars for daily living.

News Release | MontPIRG Foundation

Questionable lending drives Americans to record auto debt

The amount of money Americans owe on their cars is now at an all-time high -- up 75 percent since the end of 2009. Americans’ rising indebtedness for cars raises concerns about the financial future of millions of households as lenders extend credit to more and more Americans without the ability to repay, according to a new U.S. PIRG report.

Blog Post

Domino's: Don't 'micromanage' our overuse of antibiotics

With antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" becoming a growing public health crisis, Domino's Pizza is choosing to fight, rather than address, a call to action.

Blog Post

Nestle plans to phase out plastic straws as more corporations respond to consumer demand

Nestle is responding to consumer demands to reduce plastic waste.

Antibiotics

Stop the overuse of antibiotics

The World Health Organization has identified antibiotic resistance as one of the top 10 global health threats. That's why reducing antibiotic overuse in food production is so important.

 

Public Health

How safe is our food?

Our latest report examines recent food safety trends, case studies of national recalls, what they mean for our health, and what we should do about it. 

 

Antibiotics

The golden arches just raised the bar for responsible antibiotic use in meat production

McDonald’s, the largest purchaser of beef in the United States, has made a commitment to reduce medically important antibiotics use in its beef supply.

 

Consumer Protection

Congressional investigation concludes that Equifax breach was entirely preventable

The worst data breach in history could have been prevented with some basic security measures.

 
  • STOP THE OVERUSE OF ANTIBIOTICS
    The World Health Organization has identified antibiotic resistance as one of the top 10 global health threats. That's why reducing antibiotic overuse in food production is so important.
    TAKE ACTION
  • How safe is our food?
    Nationwide recalls ranging from romaine lettuce to millions of pounds of beef to Ritz and Goldfish crackers underscore that there’s a growing public health crisis we need to address.
    Find out
  • WATCH OUT FOR UNSAFE TOYS
    Our “Trouble in Toyland” report found boron in slime, choking hazards without the proper warning labels, “connected” toys that pose a privacy risk and more.
    GET THE FACTS
  • HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?
    One year after Equifax announced the worst data breach in history, a U.S. House committee has recommended weakening data breach laws. Tell Congress to protect Americans, not Equifax.
    TAKE ACTION

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