The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

US court upholds penalty for phone records seller

Anonymous Coward

never mind the fine 

Flame

Just send 'em to the firing squad and get it over with.

Wortel

Long description 

Boffin

".. The scandal exposed a practice known as pretexting, in which unscrupulous investigators misrepresent their identities to phone company representatives in an attempt to trick them into revealing the billing records of people."

We call that 'social engineering'.