Schumer Reveals: Cell Phone Call Logs for Sale, Invading Privacy of Millions of New York Cell Phone Users

SCHUMER REVEALS: CELL PHONE CALL LOGS FOR SALE, INVADING PRIVACY OF MILLIONS OF NEW YORK CELL PHONE USERS

Thieves Steal and Sell Entire List of Every Call Cell Phone Owner has Made, Private, Business and Personal Relationships Made Public for a Small Fee

Who your Physician is, Whether you see a Psychologist, Companies you do Business with, Private/Personal Relationships Can all be made Public

Federal Trade Commission Ignoring Problem - Schumer Introduces National Legislation to Criminalize Practice and Set up Unit in FTC to Fix Problem

While much attention has been called to identity theft in the past months, few know about a growing black market of cell phone call logs stolen and sold by criminals, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer revealed today. In an effort to combat this dangerous scenario, the Senator announced national legislation to criminalize the practice of both stealing and selling these records. He also called on the FTC to set up a special unit to fix the problem.

"Stealing someone's cell phone records is absolutely a criminal act and the fact that it can't be prosecuted as one has got to change," Schumer said. "This isn't something that enables financial fraud like identity theft, its personal."

Cell phone call logs are sought out for a variety of reasons. For years phone records gave been used by law enforcement and private detectives, but with the internet, gaining access to that information has gotten much easier. Websites like www.locatecell.com offer the service online, and with little regulation it is nearly impossible to stop.

Cell phone records can be of great use to criminals and the information provided through a call log provides whoever is looking with a wealth of personal data. Many call rosters can reveal the names of a cell user's doctors, their public and private relationships, their business associates and more. While other personal information such as social security numbers which can be on public documents that are found by data brokers, the only warehouse of phone records is at the phone companies themselves.

Experts say that these records can be made available through three techniques. The first is having someone that works for one of the phone companies who sells the data. Though strict rules inside most of the phone companies make this practice risky, officials say that finding someone with access to the information desired is not that difficult. The second technique is "pretexting" where a data broker or the like pretends to be the owner of the phone. In doing so, they convince the cell phone company's employees to release the data to them.

Third, as managing cell phone accounts online has become a more common practice, data seekers can access the accounts via the internet. Because cell phone companies push account holders to manage their accounts online, many of them set up the online capability in advance, many customers never access their internet accounts. If someone seeking the information can figure out how to activate the account before the real customer does, they get unfettered access to all of the call records.

Though the problem is all too common, federal law is too narrow to include this type of crime. Pretexting for financial data is illegal, but its does not include phone records.

In an effort to combat this scenario, today Senator Charles E. Schumer announced national legislation that would close the existing loophole and criminalize phone record theft and use. The bill would make it a federal offense, punishable as a felony, to obtain customer information from a telephone service provider by false pretenses. It would violate federal law to obtain customer information (1) by making false or fraudulent statements or representations to an employee of a telephone service provider; (2) by making such statements to a customer of a telephone service provider; or (3) by providing false documentation to a telephone service provider knowing that the document is false.

"We already have these protections for our financial information. We ought to have it for the very personal information that can be gleaned from our telephone records," Schumer said.

Schumer also called on the FTC to set up a special unit to investigate these crimes. The agency has never taken a case like this to court and experts believe that they don't understand how widespread the problem is. Schumer's call for a special unit within the agency would study the breadth of the problem and study specific practices on how to ensure that cell records do not get in the wrong hands.

"Its time we take this problem as seriously as the crime committed is," Schumer said.

http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/2005/PR41780.NYC%20Cell%20Phones.072405.html