I agree that the situation is bad, but I do want to call out a technicality here. You don't have to work with them. Everyone around you chooses to work with them, because they believe that doing so is safer than not. And this impinges on you, because if they have bad info on you, it can hurt your interactions with people around you.

There is little that you personally can do to control the sources others use to gather information about you. That's something that's only within the power of a legal framework. The statement, "I don't want to work with Equifax because I don't trust them," is meaningless, because you do not work with Equifax.