Since December 1, 2004, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) has required financial institutions that extend credit and furnish information to a consumer reporting agency (“CRA”) to provide notice to the customer prior to, or no later than thirty days after, furnishing negative information about the customer. 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(a)(7)(A)(i). Because debt collectors do not extend credit to customers, they have not been subjected to this notice requirement. As a result, some debt collectors furnish collection information about a debt to CRAs without first providing notice to the consumer. However, pursuant to the recent debt collection final rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), debt collectors may now be required to first provide notice.
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After over a year of studying California’s Consumer Privacy Act and its impact, Virginia is poised to be the second state to pass its own version – to be known as the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA),[1] with an expected effective date of January 1, 2023. A handful of other states have similar bills pending at this time. Virginia’s law, like California’s, authorizes the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Attorney General to be its enforcer. Unlike California’s CCPA, Virginia’s law expressly prohibits lawsuits by private individuals.
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