Last week, articles in Denver Post,
New York Times, and ComputerWorld about 'pretexting'
caught my attention.  They dealt with an information broker who obtained confidential
information about other persons by giving a false pretext. In other words, pretexting (or
pretext calling) is lying over the telephone about who you are and why you are obtaining
the information. Typical situations involve debt collection, fraud investigation, divorce
proceedings, or tabloid articles about banking accounts, credit card histories, salaries,
and medical histories from banks, insurance agencies, medical centers, and telephone
companies, just to name a few.It is
interesting that pretexting is usually legal (except when impersonating a police officer
or government official). No major corporations have been prosecuted for this deceptive
practice. In fact, the practice is widely accepted in some industries.
The case in Denver involves the small firm of
Touch Tone Information Acquisition. The State of Colorado is one of the few states having
a law against impersonating someone to obtain confidential information for commercial
gain. The precedence of this case may affect federal and state legislation across the
nation.
The article in the New York Times entitled
"Law Confronts Seller of Private Data" gave additional details.  (requires a free registration with NYTimes.com)
 The ComputerWorld article summarized
the Colorado case and gave advice to companies on how to safeguard their information
systems. Some suggestions for 'stopping the leaks' were: to show dialog boxes to
remind agents to verify the caller's identity, to track frequency of confidential
inquiries against an account alerting if certain limits are exceeded, and to monitor
outsourcing services for any sensitive customer support functions. Clearly state the
policy for releasing confidential information to all employees (and contractors). And
then, apply lots of common sense.
 The
issues and techniques for obtaining confidential information about persons are well
explained in Carole Lane's book Naked in Cyberspace. The Web Farming book
carried the following comment about Lane's book: "A must reference for the Web
farmer... A sobering and balanced description of the privacy and need-to-know
issues." However, nowhere in this book are suggestions for deceptive practices, like
pretext calling. In contrast, Lane clearly calls for a high level of professionalism by
information brokers. In particular, it is ethical practice by brokers to identify honestly
the caller and the reasons for the call.
How does pretext calling relate to web farming?
The efficient exchange of information for web farming will depend upon honest
authentication of both producers and consumers of information. Deception by the parties in
this exchange will add tremendous burdens.
It is widely accepted that it is wrong to falsify
identity through misusing credit cards for an e-commerce purchase via the Web. However, is
it wrong to falsify identity to obtain a white paper from your competitor's website? Is it
wrong to not identify your web crawler when you spider your competitor's website? And so
on. . .
The point is that web farmers must act in a
highly ethical manner if we are to create a viable profession from this discipline. See
the suggested Code of Ethics for web farming. Note specifically the
point about disclosure.
I would like to hear about your comments on this
critical issue.
- Richard Hackathorn
dick@webfarming.com |
