PIs Selling Phone Records Sued By The FTC

carl writes "According to an MSNBC article, the FTC has sued five different background investigation firms for selling confidential phone records." From the article: "In the lawsuits announced Wednesday, the FTC charged the companies used 'false pretenses, fraudulent statements, fraudulent or stolen documents or other misrepresentations, including posing as a customer of a telecommunications carrier' to get the phone records. The companies advertised on their Web sites that they could get the confidential phone records of any individual and make them available for a fee, the agency said."

Comments

Re:PLS...

[Kapsar]

private investigators

You can't really secure against social engineering

[necro2607]

Heh, social engineering is a technique that essentially all humans are vulnerable to. Also, phone companies are actually one of the top targets of social engineering. That combination makes for a pretty high likelihood of peoples' phone-line-related data to be effectively public domain...

There isn't really much way to be "secure" against social engineering because it exploits the one system you can't secure - the human mind. I know people who do this sort of stuff (I don't mean theft though heh) for fun on a fairly regular basis and they can all screw with pretty much any person. It's really amazing how easily you can manipulate someone of any personality type, actually. heh.

The only people who I've found to be highly resistant to any sort of social engineering are the type of people who know how to do it as well. It requires a certain mindset to be able to catch on to when a person might be trying to manipulate you. Unfortunately that sort of mindset usually involves always having a certain amount of suspicion towards peoples' statements all the time...

Some reading material:

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1527

http://www.morehouse.org/hin/blckcrwl/hack/soceng. txt

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/6/3/223758/2267

http://rf-web.tamu.edu/security/secguide/V1comput/ Social.htm

etc. etc..

Re:Selling private information?

[brjndr]

Under the Free File Disclosure Rule of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act), each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion -- is required to provide you with a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months, if you ask for it.

The three nationwide consumer reporting companies are using one website, one toll-free telephone number, and one mailing address for consumers to order their free annual report. They are:

www.annualcreditreport.com
1-877-322-8228
or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to:
Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. (The form is at ftc.gov/credit)

Under federal law, you're entitled to a free report if a company takes adverse action against you, such as denying your application for credit, insurance, or employment, and you ask for your report within 60 days of receiving notice of the action. The notice will give you the name, address, and phone number of the consumer reporting company. You're also entitled to one free report a year if you're unemployed and plan to look for a job within 60 days; if you're on welfare; or if your report is inaccurate because of fraud, including identity theft. Otherwise, any of the three consumer reporting companies may charge you up to $9.50 for another copy of your report within a 12-month period.

Re:tch tch

[CRCulver]

The NSA already has plenty of the business opportunities that especially irk us here at Slashdot: patents. Read any introduction to the NSA's work like Bamford's The Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets , and you'll see the NSA develops plenty of interesting technologies which they then patent. Cryptome often reports on new NSA patents.

Buy Instead

[The Angry Mick]

Your Government's surveillance programme hates competition.

But they do love shopping in a free market:

FBI buys illegally acquired phone records for investigations