In a complete and unavoidable about turn, the three main credit bureaus are now championing the value of consumers using a credit freeze to protect against identity theft. A credit freeze prevents new credit being opened without the permission of the consumer and more than 40 states have introduced credit freeze laws in the last few years.

When you set up a credit freeze you'll usually be given a security PIN, and every time there's a credit inquiry to any of the credit bureaus or someone tries to obtain new credit in your name, you can use the pin to allow or reject the credit request.

But if the credit bureaus had their way there would be no such thing as a credit freeze. According to a recent article in USA Today the three credit bureaus spent $1.4 million last year touring every state in the nation to try to persuade lawmakers that credit freeze laws were a bad idea.

Thankfully our lawmakers didn’t buy their hollow arguments, so in an effort to save some face each of the three bureaus recently announced their plan to finally offer credit freezes to consumers, but for a price ($10 per freeze, free if you can prove that you’re a victim of identity theft). A Transunion spokesperson even described the progress as “groundbreaking” although she might have been referring to their inevitable cave in.