By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

We indicated earlier this month that Illinois was moving toward such a ban; now Sen. Charles Schumer (D, NY) along with Sen. Arlen Specter (R, PA) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D, FL) have introduced the Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006, which would create felony criminal penalties for stealing and selling the records of mobile phone, landline, and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) subscribers.

One major way of gaining such information is “pretexting”: calling companies and pretending to be regulators, customers or employees.

The “pretexters” buttress their believability by buying such personal data as Social Security numbers from online database companies. Often a name, address and the last four digits of a person’s Social Security number are all that’s needed to obtain calling records.

Another route is to buy the information from insiders, like phone company employees.

The Web sites that sell phone records these days claim they aren’t doing anything illegal in obtaining them. They claim no specific prohibition exists against posing as someone else to obtain private information as long as the data is not financial. Source: AP via Yahoo! News

We Say: I didn’t realize, as the article indicates, that pretexting for financial information is illegal, while pretexting for call records is not. I’m certainly not comforted by the fact that the sites seemingly aren’t doing anything wrong because there’s a loophole right now. Let’s hope these senators move to close it quickly.