Phone record brokers targetted (illegal sale of private phone records)

[ovidsen]

This is a followup to a story from the Chicago Sun Times I posted yesterday about how private companies are illegally aquiring and selling cell phone records to anyone with the cash.

It turns out that land line phone records are just as vulnerable.

The link to the first story can be found in this one.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cell06.html

The Illinois governor and attorney general moved Thursday to end the sale of telephone records without customers' knowledge, a practice that worries privacy experts and law enforcement agencies. (snip)

In a test of locatecell.com, the Sun-Times last week e-mailed this reporter's cell phone number and a $110 credit card charge to the Web service. The service provided a one-month list of 78 calls, including numbers for law enforcement sources, family members and Sun-Times staffers. The service also can track down records for land-based phones.

[salin]

1. things are getting so out of control

at least the public is starting to get a glimpse of how much their privacy is already compromised.

[savemefromdumbya]

2. the latest thing now is that many people are

saying the most outlandish things on the phone now (just incase anyone is listening). Can you imagine all the false positives they will track?

[stop the bleeding]

3. This is not surprising. N/T

[stop the bleeding]

4. kicking for awareness - DU still does not get it yet. n/t

[Richard D]

5. I contacted Cingular abou this . . .

. . . and here is their reply:

Thank you for contacting Cingular Wireless about your wireless account.
I apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced in regard to your account. I will be happy to assist you.

Protecting customer information is of the utmost priority to Cingular.
We have a variety of measures in place to protect unauthorized access to customer information, and we also train our customer care representatives to be alert for anyone who tries to improperly coax information out of them.

Cingular does not provide customer information to companies offering cell phone records for sale, and we are conducting investigations to determine how such companies might be obtaining access to such data.
Cingular also has filed lawsuits against several companies that advertise the sale of wireless phone records.

To further protect your information, we recommend that you place a passcode (which is in addition to your password) on your account, which you can do by calling 1-866-CINGULAR. Choose a unique passcode, keep it stored in a secure place, and do not give it to anyone else unless you trust them with full access to and power over your account.

I hope this addresses the concerns you have.