Congress Addresses Brokering of Cell Phone Records
February 10, 2006
By News Report
On Wednesday the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee's Consumer Affairs, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee held a hearing on protecting consumers' phone records, prompted by online sales of such records. Cingular Wireless, for example, said in a release it obtained temporary restraining orders against the operators of Web sites including locatecell.com, celltolls.com, peoplesearchamerica.com, datafind.org, and efindoutthetruth.com. Cingular said that data brokers typically attempt to obtain customer records through "pre-texting." For example, the broker may call customer service and pose as a telephone operator helping a customer with hearing disabilities or who recently underwent throat surgery.
"Cingular shares a common goal with Congress," said Kent Wells, Cingular's vice president of federal legislative affairs, "to protect consumer privacy. That is why Cingular supports enactment of tough new laws to criminalize the practices being used by the data burglars and any others who sell stolen phone records. We commend Congress for its attention to this important issue."
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