http://www.kcll.org/wordpress/2009/05/19/pretexting-employees-sentenced/ Tips and tricks for Legal Research in Washington State Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:23:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://www.kcll.org/wordpress/2009/05/19/pretexting-employees-sentenced/comment-page-1/#comment-9311 Tamara Thompson Tue, 19 May 2009 18:46:01 +0000 http://www.kcll.org/wordpress/2009/05/19/pretexting-employees-sentenced/#comment-9311 BNT Investigations apparently used a method called impersonation -- pretending to be the person whose information you are seeking -- to obtain Social Security Administration and other protected government data. This is illegal because financial and medical information is only disclosable under restrictive conditions: if you don't have legal authority you have to be the customer. Pretexting -- a ruse to obtain information -- is a method that is illegal only in limited situations: if it's specifically barred by law, as it is in Washington State, but, in that case, only for obtaining or selling customer telephone call records. While impersonation does rely on pretexting, the act of pretexting is not usually illegal. For example, if my caller ID displays on your phone when I call you as coming from "Grocery" but I'm a PI asking for your brother's name to mail something, I've visually deceived you, but I didn't impersonate anyone. Acts of fraud and ID theft are always illegal. BNT Investigations apparently used a method called impersonation — pretending to be the person whose information you are seeking — to obtain Social Security Administration and other protected government data. This is illegal because financial and medical information is only disclosable under restrictive conditions: if you don’t have legal authority you have to be the customer. Pretexting — a ruse to obtain information — is a method that is illegal only in limited situations: if it’s specifically barred by law, as it is in Washington State, but, in that case, only for obtaining or selling customer telephone call records. While impersonation does rely on pretexting, the act of pretexting is not usually illegal. For example, if my caller ID displays on your phone when I call you as coming from “Grocery” but I’m a PI asking for your brother’s name to mail something, I’ve visually deceived you, but I didn’t impersonate anyone. Acts of fraud and ID theft are always illegal.

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