- The FTC Web site provides facts about pretexting
- ID Theft provides information to the consumer about identity theft and how pretexting is used to gain access to personal information
- PI magazine discusses the use of pretexting during the course of an investigation
- Read an article about pretexting, ID theft, and what it means
- Information about H.R. 4709: Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006 which outlaws pretexting
- Federal Trade Commissions privacy rules prevent the use of pretexting to gain personal information
- Review the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) efforts to stop identity theft and prevent pretexting
- The United States House of Representatives provides a video on the hearing conducted to combat pretexting
- Dictionary.com provides definitions for pretexting
- The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on preventing pretexting
- The U.S. Department of Justice and some telecommunication carriers protest a bill that would prevent the use of pretexting to gain customers personal information
Legality of Pretexting
When is pretexting illegal?
There are laws against pretexting! To begin with, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 bans the act of assuming a false identity in order to gain access to financial data. This means that it is illegal to use pretexting against banks, credit unions, brokerages, income tax prepares, debt collection agencies, real estate firms, credit reporting agencies and other organizations that handle financial data.
According to the FTC, under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act it's illegal for anyone to:
- Use false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or documents to get customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution.
- Use forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents to get customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution.
- Ask another person to get someone else's customer information using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or using false, fictitious or fraudulent documents or forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents.
Before 2007, this was the only federal law against pretexting. There were no signed laws that barred investigators from using pretexting as a way to obtain private information that was not financial in nature. This meant that there was no signed law that prevented anyone from using pretexting as a way to obtain information otherwise available in the public domain, such as real estate taxed, bankruptcy, police records, or general contact information. There was no also no clear law banning pretexting as a means to obtain information about telecommunication records, such as phone records, email logs, and other types of communication.
In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission moved to expand Section 5 of the FTC Act to specifically include a law banning the use of pretexting to retrieve telephone records. Section 5 of the FTC Act was originally written to bar deceptive business practices in general. The relevant part ofSection 5 of the FTC Act reads as the following:
"Whenever the Commission shall have reason to believe that any such person, partnership, or corporation has been or is using any unfair method of competition or unfair or deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce, and if it shall appear to the Commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public, it shall issue and serve upon such person, partnership, or corporation a complaint stating its charges in that respect..."
In 2007, a law was passed by Congress known as the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act or the "Telco Privacy Act." The Telco Privacy Act outlaws pretexting for confidential phone records information by making it a federal offense to knowingly and intentionally obtain, sell, purchase, transfer or receive confidential phone records information through false or fraudulent statements or representations.
It should be noted that an exception to the Telco Privacy Act is in regard to criminal investigation. Pretexting can be used legally by law enforcement in sting operations. For example, law enforcement officials can catch online child molesters, abusers, or pornographers by setting up a "pretext" in which they pretend to be potential clients and then bust the guilty party when substantial evidence of wrongful doing has been gathered. In this instance and many like it, pretexting is lawful.
For more information about the legality of pretexting, visit the FTC pretexting website.