“A uniform standard of liability will make it much clearer for the entire industry, and for the data brokers themselves, to understand where the liability lies,” Salow continues. “We commend the states’ efforts, we really do—but as with any other type of regulation, when you have a patchwork of 50 different state laws, it creates more difficulties in enforcement and the message is not as clear as to what is prohibited and what isn’t.”
“I think that the federal law is well served to go after both people offering to buy the information and people offering to sell the information,” adds Majors.
CTIA-The Wireless Association® President and CEO Steve Largent agrees with Majors’ assessment of the legislative focus on criminal activity, and not on carriers, who along with consumers are also being victimized by pretexters. “HR 4709 is exactly what consumers and the industry needed to put pretexters out of business. Increased fines and more jail time should be effective deterrents to anyone thinking about stealing personal information.”
Congress considered a number of pretexting measures, although many of them went far beyond what was needed. Some bills, for example, would have required carriers to track and report to the Federal Trade Commission all customer calls that request information. Others proposed prescriptive security measures which would have forced all carriers to follow the same procedures; in essence providing fraudsters with just the information they need to beat such a universal blueprint. Others would have required a change to the opt-in/opt-out provisions for sharing customer data and/or encryption of customer data. The problem with such provisions was that they would not have really addressed the pretexting problem.
“We believe we are very proactive and very focused on appropriately applying encryption technology and other technologies to protect the consumer,” says Greg Schaffer, chief security officer, Alltel.
“Our issue is with a mandatory requirement on certain technologies that we feel like we’re already engaged in and have a pretty good sense of what works and doesn’t work. We would like to be allowed to continue to find those solutions that make sense.
“If I have a check-the-box list that’s required by regulation, it feels like when you’ve done that you’ve done your duty. It becomes much harder to do those additional things that are really necessary to protecting the consumer over the long haul. You’re investing in things that are expensive and don’t solve the problem and that makes it harder to invest in things that will really solve the problem.”
