Some Web sites stop selling phone call data: US FTC

Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON: Many Internet sites that had offered to obtain customer telephone records have stopped taking orders amid federal investigations into privacy concerns about the practice, a U.S. Federal Trade Commission official said on Wednesday.

The agency recently checked about 40 Internet sites that previously offered to provide a customer's call records when given the telephone number, but found many have discontinued the service because of the controversy.

"More than half were no longer advertising the sale of these records," Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau, told the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer affairs.

The FTC also sent about 20 warning letters to companies advising them it was illegal to engage in deception to obtain someone else's telephone records, Parnes said.

The FTC and Federal Communications Commission are investigating if any laws were broken by companies that obtain and sell subscribers' telephone records. One concern is that people are posing as someone else to get the data without consent.

Two of the more prominent Internet sites, locatecell.com and celltolls.com, said they were no longer taking orders and orders that were not yet processed would not be completed.

A lawyer for the company that owns the sites, 1st Source Information Specialists Inc., was not available for comment.

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are planning bills that would outlaw obtaining and selling telephone records, with substantial penalties for violations.

"Basically, you're robbing a person's private records and it can be used for a multitude of things," said Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said recent publicity has led to some Internet sites being flooded with requests for telephone and other personal records. Any legislation banning the practice, however, should also include Internet services such as instant messaging as well as postal information.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, plans to introduce legislation on Thursday to make it illegal to obtain telephone records without consent from the subscriber, according to an aide. In the House, Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a Texas Republican, said he planned to introduce legislation soon.

The FCC also plans to launch a review, possibly later this week, that would determine whether telephone companies need more safeguards to protect subscriber call records.