Financial Privacy & Security

Wall Street Oversight

Loose restrictions and a lack of transparency and oversight have allowed for financial institutions to engage in extremely risky practices including the buying and packaging of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. Read more.

Identity Theft Protection

In an increasingly high-tech marketplace, we trust businesses with more of our personal information than ever before. Yet many companies aren’t as careful as we think—concealing security breaches or questionable sales of information that make consumers vulnerable to identity theft. Read more.

Predatory Lending

Payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, tax refund anticipation loan (RAL) firms, auto title pawn stores and others have built an industry by kicking low-income, working-class and military families when they’re down. Some states have reined in these predatory lenders, but not all—and certainly not Congress. U.S. PIRG fights to regulate the industry’s misleading promises and triple-digt interest rates, and to educate consumers on how to protect themselves. Read more.

Investor Protection

Markets should pick winners and losers, not cheaters. Consumers and investors as well as employees and taxpayers need tough laws and tough rules to guarantee that their investments are protected. Read more.

Reining In Credit Card Abuses

More than half of all Americans carry credit card debt, partially because of a variety of unfair practices used by credit card companies to trap consumers in a cycle of over-priced debt. Read More.

Overview

Conducting the day-to-day business of our lives shouldn’t come at the cost of our financial security. But too often, the big banks, insurance and investment companies and other firms take advantage of unsuspecting consumers or manipulate the system. U.S. PIRG fights to make the financial marketplace work fairly, to protect vulnerable Americans from predatory lending terms, to equip consumers with the knowledge to protect their finances, and to expose business practices that make us vulnerable to identity theft, fraud and abusive credit rates.

Hidden fees, abusive interest rates and lax security have become all too common in our under-regulated, high-tech marketplace. U.S. PIRG works to ensure that consumers' privacy and finances are secure.

Resource

New York Times editorial: The College Credit Card Trap

This recent editorial features the U.S. PIRG Education Fund's truthaboutcredit.org campaign to get unfair credit card marketing off college campuses. Read the editorial.