January 16, 2006

Cingular Wireless L.L.C. obtained a temporary restraining order against two companies it believes have sold mobile-phone records online.

The Federal court in Atlanta granted the order against Data Find Solutions Inc. and First Source Information Specialists Inc.

Cingular said it believes Data Find Solutions once owned and operated several websites, including locatecell.com and celltolls.com, which advertise the sale of cell-phone records. The websites are now believed to be owned and operated by First Source Information Specialists.

The restraining order comes on the heals of a damaging report on the CBS Evening News last Thursday which condemned the wireless industry at large for not protecting customer call records.

"Cingular will not tolerate the theft of customer records.

We plan to continue fighting cell-phone record theft on a number of fronts, including working with law enforcement and policymakers to crack down on websites that offer cell-phone records for sale," said Joaquin Carbonell, Cingular's executive vice president and general counsel.

The nation's largest carrier believes such companies are accessing records by using pretexting-impersonating the subscriber whose records they are trying to get.

Cingular urged its customers to protect their accounts by adding a password and shredding documents.

The issue came to a head after an Internet blogger, John Aravosis, said he was able to buy his own call records. Aravosis' carrier is Cingular.

More notably, Aravosis said he bought the records of retired Army General Wesley Clark. Aravosis said Clark's carrier is T-Mobile USA Inc.'s Omnipoint division. T-Mobile USA released a statement calling the actions of the data brokers deplorable.

Such online services fall into a cloudy legal area. Although there is legislation barring identity theft, no law specifically targets firms that sell cell-phone records.

Because of the lack of such legislation, liberal grassroots group Moveon.org started a petition drive to get Congress to act.

Privacy advocates want stricter rules governing the release of consumer proprietary network information.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center petitioned the Federal Communications Commission last summer to tighten rules to cover third-party data brokers specifically.

Source: RCR