Friday, January 06, 2006

Your Phone Records Are for Sale

This is scary, and it doesn't make me feel any better to discover that Locatecell.com is operating out of the red state of Tennessee.

Does this mean I can find out if my Congressmen have been talking to Jack Abramoff?

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. . . 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. Representatives of Data Find Solutions Inc., the Tennessee-based operator of Locatecell.com, could not be reached for comment. . .

How well do the services work? The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was closed for the New Year's holiday.

On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.