They Have Your Phone Records

So, our siblings over in the Windy City recently pointed out a really creepy set of businesses that we had kinda hoped only existed on Veronica Mars.

What are we blabbering on about? Basically while much of the world is worried about Bush listening in on your phone calls (or those of CNN reporters), the FBI is warning its agents (and pretty much anyone who'll listen) to be aware that your phone records are very, very, easy to obtain for a hundred bucks or so thanks to websites like this.

How easy to get? "To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said." Uhm, by now we probably really shouldn't be at all surprised by that, and yet we are.

Chicagoist points out that this could be a great boon for wives looking into their cheating husbands (no need to steal his phone to look for suspicious numbers, just get the record!). In the meantime, we think we're going be moving all of our "shadier" phone dealings to a prepaid phone...

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By Garth Johnston in News on January 7, 2006 1:54 PM

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numbermuncher

On a recent tour of the Ford Museum, I came across an old ad published in one of the old entertainment magazine from the very early 20th century. The ad offered the phone numbers of at the time famous movie stars in exchange for a few bucks. It was the equivalent of an A-list phone book. So these new businesses are nothing new, except now you can buy the numbers of unimportant people instead of movie stars. Talk about fifteen minutes.