LANSING — State Rep. John Chirkun (D-Roseville) introduced House Bill 4658 today to help protect Michiganders from identity theft. The bill would prohibit scanning or retaining any information obtained from the machine-readable zone of an individual’s Driver’s License or identification card, except when used for authorized purposes.
“Identity theft can have catastrophic, long-lasting effects on an individual’s financial situation,” said Rep. Chirkun. “We need to do everything we can to protect Michiganders from these threats. My bill will help reduce consumer fraud in our state by ensuring that consumers’ private information and data cannot be stored, shared or sold for profit except in authorized cases.”
Authorized purposes include verifying the authenticity of state-issued identification, verifying an individual’s age when purchasing restricted products, preventing fraud if an individual returns an item and various other situations. California, Georgia, Hawaii and Rhode Island have already enacted similar legislation.
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