How Easy Is It To Get the Private Cell Phone Records and Address of Verizon's CEO?

Our cell phone records are not safe.

Even if you have an unlisted number, chances are that all your personal data -- your cell phone number, who you called, where you live, and the number of your private sex therapist -- are all up for sale somewhere on the Internet.

Who's to blame for this? According to this Washington Post article, it's largely the carriers themselves, who do not have adequate security measures in place; one of their employees may even be selling your cell phone records to one of these outside companies.

The only good news is that no one's data is private. I recently signed up for a "free cell phone records" site to see if I could find the unlisted numbers and home addresses of the big three telco CEOs: Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, and Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon. Unfortunately, Stephenson and Hesse had common names, so I couldn't find them in the huge pile of unlisted numbers that came back.

But Ivan Seidenberg ... there's a unique name.




Some CEOs have an enormous ego; Ivan Seidenberg has an enormous logo.


Verizon Wireless is one of the worst offenders of consumer privacy, since they share personal cellphone data with "affiliates, agents, and parent companies." According to the company, this means they "keep it in the family," which means you only have to worry about your data being shared with every person in this picture:




"The Verizon Wireless network of security breaches"


Someone in "the family" must have blabbed, because it was easy to track down Ivan Seidenberg's phone number and home address -- it took about three minutes. I punched the Verizon CEO's address into my GPS and was taken to a ritzy neighborhood outside of New York. On the seat next to me was a bullhorn, a microphone, and a personal message from Verizon subscribers everywhere.