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Cell Phone Records for Sale
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a good writeup on how 'data brokers' use various techniques to obtain cell phone records of individuals then offer them for sale to anyone who will pay. The data is obtained by either bribing phone company employees, or 'pretexting', or accessing unregistered customer accounts online. Although phone companies are the only source of this information (unlike, say SSNs which are available from many sources), one Cingular spokesman was quoted as saying that this is 'an infinitesimally small problem'."
Those are like mini-vinyl discs that you can plug into your phone for ringer tunes, right? I bet DJs will love them!
This is basically a candied way of saying "there's only a few ways they can do it, so don't worry about it."
Wrong. Compromise is as easy as one... that's right, one point of failure.
It's still a vulnerability.
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i signed up with net 10 and i never even gave them my name, just pick up the phone at walmart, go online or call from a payphone to actiuvate it. wait 30 minutes to 1 day (varies) and it's active. i can buy refill cards with cash and activate them by phone or internet, all without giving out so much as my name. though it's a bit more expensive than standard cell plans at .10/min and .03/outgoin SMS they give me free incoming sms (Verizon are whores, they give everyone free outgoing sms and charge for incoming sms so you cann't control your spending)
Net 10 runs on the tracphone/cingular GSM network and has a nice quick voicemail system (verison i swear took me over 30 seconds to even start hearing voicemail)
no affiliation just a happy customer
verizon sucks
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Calling the cell company and pretending to be the owner of the account. Since SSNs are apparently easy to acquire, access via pretexting should not be all that difficult. Of course, it is illegal.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
It is a tiny problem for them, because it hasn't started to cost them money. They could give half a crap if my info was sold to anyone, it doesn't effect them at all.
There is quite a bit that could be done with this data, from it you can build social webs, For example Bob bought a brand new *foo* Brad is his friend, so perhap we can intrest Brad in a loan to also purchase a *foo*.
I am sure there are dozens of other things that could be found from this info.
I say make the company who releases my personal information pay me a hefty chunk of change, and it will stop being a tiny problem for them.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
In certain circles, it is far from unknown that with a little grease to the palm and massage of the ego that you can get the weakest link in IT security, the human personnel, to compromise security and integrity of databases. It's been done for many years. Should it really surprise us that it happens with cell companies full of people who figure themselves underpaid for the work they do and having no real loyalties?
People who purposely reveal any customer personal account information should be punished for it, and given what incentives they need to testify against those who put them to it, and those who did made examples of. We know it's been done for years in IT, we certainly don't need it to spread in the cell world. A solid shout of intolerance for this from the public is needed.
Typically, this means that some politicians will make much, do little on topic, and load it with pork and rights abuses. So I'm not holding my breath.
At the telecom place I work, even without strict rules in place, I have always practiced a challenge based system to get information that the real customer should know about their company account off the top of their head. Until we have two-part authentication, it's the best I can do. Too bad so many others see no problem in farking over other people.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
You can do the equivalent of google page ranking for people. People who make many calls or are frequently called are well connected nodes in the graph of all phonecalls. These are likely to be influential people. So if you're trying to market something, say, then these are the people to call.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Check out these guys
http://www.datatraceusa.com/products.asp/
You can get pretty much anything related to cell phones. Expensive, but available.
AND, they're not hiding at all. They must think it's legal.
If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.