Via TechnologyNewsDaily.com:

Verizon Wireless Halts Data Theft

Tech News Daily
September 15, 2005

Verizon Wireless has secured a court order to halt a Tennessee-based company’s practice of obtaining and selling telephone records of Verizon Wireless customers.

Earlier this summer, Verizon Wireless sued Cookeville, Tenn.-based Source Resources Inc., in New Jersey State Superior Court in Somerset County, N.J., seeking among other things an injunction barring Source Resources from acquiring, possessing or selling confidential Verizon Wireless customer account information without a valid court order or the customer’s express consent.

Superior Court Judge Harriet Derman ordered a permanent injunction against Source Resources Tuesday as part of a settlement between Verizon Wireless and the company. Source Resources also agreed to cooperate with Verizon Wireless by surrendering records of its transactions and information about how it previously obtained customer records.

“Accessing a person’s personal telephone records without a valid court order or the customer’s permission is illegal,” said Steven Zipperstein, General Counsel and Vice President of Legal and External Affairs at Verizon Wireless. “Verizon Wireless will protect our customers against these kinds of assaults on their privacy, and we will use every weapon in our legal arsenal to shut down identity-theft operations.”

The lawsuit was filed by Verizon Wireless July 8th against Source Resources, which advertised on its Internet site the capability to secure confidential wireless telephone records for a fee. Verizon Wireless brought the lawsuit after one of its customers reported that his confidential wireless phone records had been secured without his permission by Source Resources.

The original article appears here.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Krim has been reporting on this issue for several months. Here's a recent article illustrating the rampant availablity of cell phone data - not just phone numbers but whole customer bills - sold to third parties by internal telecom company employees.

-- MDT

Labels: identity theft