Verizon Wireless Wins Strong Injunction Against Data Miners
Verizon Wireless won a preliminary injunction against the owners of LocateCell.com this week that prevents them from getting information about Verizon customers or operating any site that uses Verizon information. Calling the order “quite far reaching in the prohibitions that it imposes,” Verizon Vp-Legal & External Affairs Steve Zipperstein called the action much stronger than other injunctions in similar wireless industry cases. Subscriber information security has been a major issue with all wireless carriers (CD Jan 30 p5).
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The injunction, issued by U.S. Dist. Judge Stanley Chesler, Trenton, N.J., bars companies and people associated with LocateCell -- Data Find Solutions, First Source Information Specialists and others -- from obtaining information from or contacting Verizon Wireless for any reason, providing any information they might have to any 3rd party, advertising that can obtain information from Verizon Wireless, or operating any website that seeks to obtain or offer such information. The court also said the companies have 10 days from Mon. to deliver to the court all data they had previously obtained.
Zipperstein, a former federal prosecutor, said the stringent injunction serves as a deterrent. He said he’s glad about the attention this and similar cases have drawn from the media and Capitol Hill, but suspected privacy breaches are few and will remain so because of such lawsuits. Some of the defendants are in Tenn., but they are still subject to Chesler’s ruling, Zipperstein said.
Zipperstein said he wasn’t worried about increased security breaches as wireless technology converges with the Internet. Drawing a distinction between data mining and hacking, he said Verizon Wireless has “never had a network hacked.” Data mining is a “different kind of attempted intrusion involving con artists who are extremely creative” and get information “through avenues having nothing to do with Verizon Wireless.”