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But this episode has demonstrated how very easy it can be to obtain phone records with personal information that every employer maintains, like a Social Security number and a home telephone number. Not without violating the FTC Act or any specific state laws concerning pretexting. If she specifically authorized the pretexting, she could be, but if she can prove she had no specific knowledge of such acts, she probably wouldn't be prosecuted, according to several lawyers. Would HP Chairman Patricia Dunn, who initiated the investigation, be subject to the penalties? Under one statute, the misdemeanor can be punishable by up to six months in prison or a $2,500 fine. It's usually a misdemeanor in California, but it can be a felony in certain situations, Lockyer said. The state is investigating HP's actions under two statutes: one concerning identity theft and one covering obtaining information illegally from a computer system, said Bill Lockyer, California state attorney general, in an interview with CNET. It has filed several lawsuits this year against companies that sell phone records on the Internet, an FTC representative said.īut things are different in California. The Federal Trade Commission has tried to prohibit telephone pretexting under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bars "unfair or deceptive acts" in business practices.
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Legislation is pending in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that would make pretexting for telephone records a criminal offense, but after a flurry of activity earlier this year concerning companies selling phone records on the Web, not much has happened. When it comes to financial records, pretexting is clearly illegal. While there is no specific federal law prohibiting pretexting for telephone records, there are some general civil prohibitions that probably apply. His long-distance account records were obtained when someone called AT&T and pretended to be Perkins, according to the letter from AT&T. Records of calls made from Perkins' home phone were obtained simply with his home phone number and the last four digits of his Social Security number. In a letter to HP's board (click here for PDF), Tom Perkins said his accounts were "hacked," and attached a letter from AT&T explaining how the breach occurred. An individual will call up the phone company, or visit its Web site and attempt to bluff his or her way into obtaining confidential information by pretending to be a certain customer. Pretexting involves posing as someone you are not to get information from a company. HP also said that the outside firms used to obtain the identity of the source of the leak might have used a technique called pretexting to obtain telephone records of calls made by HP directors from their home phones and cell phones. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, HP acknowledged that it investigated its own board of directors to discover who leaked information that led to a story about HP's future strategic plans. So what did HP do? What is the law? What penalties might HP face? Here are some answers that help explain the current situation.
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HP claims that pretexting is "not generally unlawful," but that it can't conclusively say that the agencies it employed to track down the source of the leak stayed within the bounds of the law. Pretexting-misrepresenting your identity to gain access to privileged information-is illegal under federal law with regards to financial records, but the law is murkier when it comes to telephone records. However, the outside firm used by HP in its investigation appears to have used a controversial tactic called "pretexting" to gain access to its directors' phone records. The company has acknowledged investigating its own directors to determine who was leaking company information, after HP Chairman Patricia Dunn was angered by a CNET story about HP's long-term strategic plans. Just when it looked like Hewlett-Packard had recovered from its missteps of the past few years, a scandal involving its board chairman and investigative firms with questionable techniques threatens to derail the Silicon Valley icon's momentum.