Cingular demands subpoena to check own phone records

CONCERNED ABOUT identity theft? Well then, avoid Cingular like the plague, if you have concerns about possible crimes committed against you, it will just refuse to answer. Then it will bend the truth when you continue to dig.

It did this to me multiple times while refusing to give me the information I needed. Accusing a company of confabulating to protect itself is a serious thing, but in this case, it did, there's no question about that.

It all started out with the HP identity theft story that it still refuses to be honest about.

Before HP named the journalists it violated, I had some suspicions that I might be one of them. This was mainly because my board level sources told me I did some of the things Pui-Wing Tam did. What was that? Making Carly Fiorina furious, and trust me, this article did, as did the followups.

So, I did what everyone else in my situation did, and called my phone companies, Qwest and Cingular. I had closed the Qwest account a while ago, but it was more than happy to check the records and tell me there were no unauthorised accesses, and no one had ever requested my phone records. Fair enough, it took about 15 minutes, and it was quite nice about it too.

On to my cell company, Cingular. After the pleasant experience at Qwest, I figured that it would give me the all clear, and I could go about my dull and unexciting life knowing that the evil people at HP didn't get to me. Boy was I wrong.

I called up Cingular, and talked to a person who identified herself as Candice Love. I explained the situation to her, and asked if she had heard about it or about pretexting. Struck out on both accounts. I asked to talk to the fraud department, and got the most amazing run around. I could not be transferred, I could not talk to anyone, and was repeatedly put on hold while she talked to people on my behalf.

Since she didn't know what pretexting was, and did not know anything about the HP case, I was a little skeptical about getting anything done. Cingular would not tell me if my records were accessed by me or someone who possibly was not me. In fact, it would not tell me anything other than it might be a good idea to password protect my account. Since I was planning on doing that anyway, I did.

After about half an hour of Cingular telling me I was crazy and not helping me out, I was ready to scream and hang up. The operattor kept putting me on hold, ostensibly talking to someone, coming back and telling me I was crazy in so many words, and basically asking me politely to go away.

I didn't. After several of these rinse and repeats, she came back with a very changed attitude and said that the case had been escalated to level three. Not being sure what level one and two were, I figured that this was better than the inferred claims of madness. It was quite odd, I have never heard a phone person do such a complete 180 degree turn before, and it really did this time. Progress.

This was on September 8th, and I was told that Cingular would have the information for me within 10 days. When asked for a reference number or case number, I was told to call back and use her name as a reference.

When I called back on the 18th, technically a day early, the person could find no record of my case. Oh great. I was a day early for something that should have taken five minutes, so I decided to wait a day and see what happened.

On the 19th, no calls, no letters, no nothing, so I called Cingular back as late in the day as I thought prudent. It could find no record of the case. I was insistent, and eventually told I should talk to the fraud department. Progress! I wanted to do that almost 10 days before, but was not allowed to then. I guess this phone person didn't want to deal with me near the end of a work day.

So, off I went to the fraud department, explained my case to the person there, and promptly entered the Twilight Zone. This person could not tell me anything, and would not tell me anything, basically sounding offended that I even had the gall to ask.

I said that I might have been the victim of Identity Theft and needed to know if my records were accessed. I told him about the call over a week ago, and he said that the case was closed on the 12th with no information sent to me at all. It basically decided not to bother, and didn't tell me.

When I called in the day before, it didn't tell me this, it was just blackholed without explanation. "What rooster euphemisms", I thought, but since I was talking to someone with a clue at the fraud department, I was on the verge of progress. Again, was I wrong.

I was told there was no way that the information could have been accessed in that way, a stance that flies directly in the face of the fact of the HP case, not to mention the lawsuit Cingular filed over pre-texting a few days later. Someone was not telling the truth, but I wasn't ready to call Cingular liars yet, maybe this guy was just a dumb as he sounded.

I have a subtle way of burning cell minutes hanging out talking to phone cube drones until they relent. They usually are not allowed to hang up unless you do, or get abusive. I stayed on the line. I had been promised an investigation, it was summarily dismissed without a word of explanation, and now I was told there is no way the info could have been stolen anyhow. The Wall Street Journal article says that Cingular was not able to protect Dawn Kawamoto's information, but mine was invulnerable. Sounds fishy, doesn't it?

Several runarounds later, I was told by the guy working the fraud department that it was against the law for me to be told if my records had been accessed. He didn't say he could not tell me over the phone, he didn't say that he could only mail it to me, or even that they didn't have that information, I was told it was illegal to give it to me. If ever the term WTF applied, it was now. I was told that information could not be released without a subpoena at all, even to me. This is untrue.

Before I lodged my first request with Cingular, Qwest gave me that information politely, quickly and without hesitation once I proved my identity. I am told T-Mobile gave another INQ writer the same information in a timely and polite way. Articles written about the case strongly imply that Verizon did so too, but I don't personally know anyone who asked. Cingular dodges, obfuscated and lied. Eventually, I gave up, it beat me.

What this comes down to is that if you have problems with identity theft, actual or potential, all the big phone companies will assist you to reasonable lengths, politely and quickly. All but one that is, Cingular. Cingular will do everything in its power not to assist, up to and including lying to you. Avoid Cingular if you are at all worried about your safety, they are far worse than having no use, it is actively antagonistic. Time to call T-Mobile. Can anyone recommend a good plan? µ