The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has approved the Protecting Consumer Phone Records Act, which will now move to the Senate floor. This act would bolster protection of consumers' phone records, which are vulnerable to scamsters and private investigators who sometimes obtain them through ruses.
See the following TMCnet stories for more details on the new bill:
Senate panel approves phone-records privacy bill
Legislation targets pretexters and websites selling consumers' personal calling records.
And this article covers some lawsuits being pursued by telcos against pretexters: The company is in legal pursuit of a PI firm illegally obtaining confidential phone records.
I notice that the companies that are getting sued for pretexting seem to have removed mention of that service from their web sites, but if you search hard you can still find outfits advertising access to phone records. Here's an example I found today:
No, I'm not going to tell you the name of the company.
AB -- 4/4/06
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