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8 March, 2006 the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act.
On 1 February, 2006, as part of the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entitled "Phone Records For Sale: Why Aren’t Phone Records Safe From Pretexting?", the committe Chairman J. Barton issued a statement, telling in part the following:
"Typically, these phone records are being obtained through the phone carriers by data brokers who are "pretexting", or impersonating either a customer or an executive within the telecommunications company to fraudulently obtain a customer’s records."
Mr. Barton expressed concern about the ease phone records can be obtained by information brokers. "Not only does the leaking of these records assist scam artists in perpetrating identity theft, but even more shadowy figures, such as organized crime, stalkers and abusive spouses, have co-opted this confidential information to locate and target their victims," he said.
Announcing the Committee's plans to address "tough questions" to some data brokers, Mr. Barton said: "I can only guess at the excuses that will be offered by people who profit by engaging in an obvious fraud, by invading personal privacy and by assisting criminal behavior."
On 3 February 2000 the Energy and Commerce Committee began mailing out written requests to a selected list of owners/operators of websites alleged to use questionable phone records data retrieval practices, thus marking the initial stage of an investigation started by the subcommittee seeking to obtain the following information:
- Detailed company records, including annual gross and net revenue, the identities of top customers, a description of services provided and a list of all business/web sites they are affiliated with;
- All methods used by the companies to acquire the information they sell over the Internet, including whether or not employees pose as telephone company customers in order to seek account information for buyers (a practice known as "pretexting");
- The legal basis, if any, that exists for their business;
- All records related to any inquiries by law enforcement or regulatory officials; and
- An explanation of whether any effort is made to obtain consent from consumers before selling their account data or to notify them after their records have been procured or sold.
A sample letter sent to information brokers can be found on The Committee on Energy and Commerce website.
Primarily the letters were sent to: Carlos Anderson of C.F. Anderson PI of Hollywood, Fla. (managing Anderson-pi.com); Tim Berndt, Chief Investigator of ReliaTrace Locate Services of Hudson, Wis. (reliatrace.com and reliablelitigation.com); Richard J. Downing, Owner of Piranha Investigations of San Leandro, Calif. and Orange Park, Fla. (piranhainvestigations.com); David Kacala, Director of Information Search Inc. of Baltimore (information-search.com); Jody Leatherman, Director of MPIS, Inc. of Keyser, W.V. (publicpeoplefinder.com, nationwidesearch.com, locatepeople.com, easytolocate.com, lostpeople.com, and peoplesearchers.com); Lisa M.
Loftus, Registered Agent of Efindoutthetruth.com, Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla. (efindoutthetruth.com); Dana Owen, President of CSI of America of Bellingham, Wash. (csiofamerica.com); Skipp Porteous, President of Sherlock Investigations of New York City (sherlockinvestigations.com); Jay Puller, President of AccuSearch Inc. of Cheyenne, Wyo. (abika.com); John Strange, President of Worldwide Investigations, Inc. of Denver (usaskiptrace.com);
Michele Yontef of Telcosecrets of Tuscon, Ariz. (telcosecrets.com);
Noah Wieder, President of Intelligent eCommerce, Inc. of Encinitas, Calif. (iinfosearch.com and bestpeoplesearch.com)); and the unidentified president or CEO of Cellulartrace.com of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.
On 8 March 2006 the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act.
"We're going to start the formal process of ending that unique threat to personal privacy, and we're going to do it without choking off the flow of data that makes information-age Americans the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest people in the history of the world," announced Joe Barton Wednesday.
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