This content was created by Robert Siciliano. This content was uploaded by Robert Siciliano. This is a YouTube news segment titled "Phone Records For Sale www.IDTheftSecurity.com" (7 News) dated February 18, 2007. It’s an investigative TV report led by reporter Jeff Glor with several unnamed speakers (SPEAKER A/B/C/E) describing how cell phone call records can be obtained and sold by data brokers/private investigators (mentions LocateCell.com), the risks (identity theft, stalking, exposure of trade secrets), recommended protections (account passwords, avoid sharing numbers, enable online-account safeguards), and industry/legal responses (Verizon text alerts, congressional push, lawsuits). The excerpt is a news/report piece featuring multiple quoted voices rather than a diarized conversation.
Chapters
Your private phone records exposed, sold to anyone willing to pay.
Your entire life is available online for a fee.
7 reveals a new threat to your privacy. Is someone selling your secrets? Tonight at 11.
It's not just your credit card and your Social Security card identity thieves are targeting. There could actually be a snooping into your personal information on your cell phone and giving that to the highest bidder. The Night Team's Jeff Glor shows us what to do. To stop someone from selling your secrets.
Your doctor's phone number, your close contacts, your classified business partners. Someone can access a record of your cell phone calls with one simple phone call or click of the mouse.
There are a lot of different websites that have access to your cellular phone number and your records in your— the actual phone calls that you make on a month-to-month basis.
Dozens of cyber spies Spies like LocateCell.com can easily be hired. With a name, address, and cell number, these data brokers or private investigators dig for details like dates, times, and lengths of your personal calls.
It could be trade secrets that could be worth millions of dollars, or it could be an obsessed lover that is trying to track you down and stalk you.
One spy strategy: with just basic personal information, somebody can call the wireless company and pretend to be you and have your records sent to the wrong hands. In an effort to fight this, a wireless operator won't let you access your account over the phone unless you answer a series of personal questions.
If the information is provided by somebody who knows the subscriber, the system is going to be defeated. It's all about keeping your information close to the vest and not sharing it.
The best way to protect your privacy is to set up a password to access your account and change this secret code often.
Don't use very simple passwords like your kids' names or your pet's pets' names, or even the last 4 numbers of your Social Security number.
Even if you have no plans to use your online account, protect that with an additional password as well, because hacking is another spy strategy.
If, uh, I was not the first person to establish online access, someone posing as me could set up such an account.
And don't give out your cell digits to companies online or over the phone.
If I'm on the way home and call a pizza delivery service, when they ask for a phone number as well as name and address, address, they could be creating a database, and it could be a database which they then sell.
This is such a big problem, cell phone companies are fighting back. Verizon Wireless now sends a text message to someone when their online account is activated. The hope is to disconnect these devious detectives who are selling your secrets. I'm Jeff Glore, 7 News.
There's also a push in Congress to make selling cell phone records a federal offense. And the wireless companies have filed several lawsuits against online snoopers. Uh, for more information on how you can protect yourself, log on to our website, click on Special Assignments.
