verizon archive security glitch?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Deborah Alexander [dsalexan () optonline net]
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 10:53 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: verizon archive security glitch?

Dave – for IP-ers, if you think of use...
Scrolling blogs this a.m., I came across a posting that seems interesting in light of the presumptive Republican 
Presidential Candidate’s views about telecoms, privacy and immunity:

From
http://www.explananda.com/

“On Thursday morning, I was trying to access some old cell phone bills online at www.verizonwireless.com. As I clicked 
through the months, most of the time the correct bill came up (as a pdf). But twice for some reason verizonwireless.com 
served up someone else’s bill. The first time I just absentmindedly clicked away and tried again. But the second time 
it occurred to me that there was something really squirrelly about the fact that I was able to access some other random 
dude’s bill. I could see all the calls that this guy made in September, 2007, his account number, and the fact that his 
bill was past due that month. That’s hardly the biggest security breach in history, but it’s also a legitimate concern 
for people who care about their privacy, and rely on companies to take reasonable steps to secure personal information.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Verizon trying to get someone to understand that there was clearly some technical 
glitch on their end, and that it raised a privacy issue (and a potential legal issue for them).
<snip>
“[Verizon] promised me that someone would call me back with an explanation. No one has called yet.
“I also made them promise to call this guy and tell him that someone else had been able to view information that should 
have been kept private, but about 5 minutes after I got off the phone with them I realized that that was unlikely. So I 
called the guy up and left a message. He called back a few hours later. No one from Verizon had called him.
<snip>
[ADDED BY WAY OF FOLLOW UP COMMENT]:
“I found it sort of interesting from an organizational perspective. Obviously Verizon gets a lot of calls from a lot of 
angry or strange people every day. So they need pretty robust filters, so that upper level managers don’t have to talk 
to every crackpot who calls with some issue that the operators aren’t in a position to properly assess. The result is 
that there was apparently no way at all for them to escalate the issue efficiently and effectively. According to them - 
and this may well be true - they just couldn’t get a hold of a supervisor who would be high up and smart enough to 
grasp the legal implications of my point, let alone the privacy and public relations aspect.
<snip>

Deborah S. Alexander, Esq.
Alexander Law Offices LLC
395 Springfield Avenue
Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922
Phone: (908) 898-1800
Fax: (908) 898-1801
Email: dsaLaw () Alexander-Legal com<mailto:dsaLaw () Alexander-Legal com>
Web: www.Alexander-Legal.com<http://www.alexander-legal.com/>





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