pretexting

First, it needs to say that pretexting is wrong.

"You don't have to be the person who sat at the keyboard and did the actual pretexting," he said.

Pretexting is a practice of using questionable methods to obtain private phone records.

Partially as a result of the case, however, congress passed a law specifically prohibiting pretexting.

The criminal complaint notes that the pretexting in the case involved the home, office, cellphone and fax numbers of 24 people.

The company has denied any role in the alleged pretexting and says it has found no evidence to support claims that it was involved.

Allied said that Einhorn was engaged in market manipulation, and illegally accessed his phone records using pretexting.

No matter how you stretch it, the new participle pretexting has an aura of dishonesty about it.

Unlike Federal law, California law specifically forbids such pretexting.

Mr. Moeller said Thursday that the company's statements about the pretexting had never confined those events to 2006.

The concept of pretexting came into the news in the last week in light of a scandal gripping Hewlett-Packard.

Memo to the Press: Pretexting is Already Illegal.

It has been discovered that pretexting has been used to impersonate an Xbox Live user for sabotage.

In early September, the company filed a statement to the S.E.C. disclosing the pretexting and stating that it was "not generally unlawful."

Internet Data Brokers and Pretexting: Who Has Access to Your Private Records?

It is not clear how widespread pretexting is, but its perpetrators appear to be mostly private investigators, seeking information for clients involved in divorces or other civil disputes.

Here is how the Federal Trade Commission defines the word on its Web site: "Pretexting is the practice of getting your personal information under false pretenses.

In a linguistic development only remotely related to the nefarious impersonation that is pretexting, we have the recent flap about adopting a pseudonym to conceal one's own identity.

Mr. Rotenberg said this was why EPIC has pushed Congress to adopt more explicit laws governing pretexting, like those that protect financial records.

The same investigation by Hewlett-Packard's law firm into the company's spying did not find that the company's chief executive had any early knowledge of the pretexting used by its detectives.

Invoices from the Action Research Group, the Florida company that is reported to have arranged the pretexting, are also among the more than 100 documents obtained by Congressional investigators.

The 1999 "GLBA" is a U.S. Federal law that specifically addresses pretexting of banking records as an illegal act punishable under federal statutes.

Mr. Dresslar said the state believed that the laws covered not just the person who committed the pretexting, but others who authorized, financed or knew of it and let it proceed.

It is similar in practice to so-called social engineering in the context of security and pretexting used to get data like social securiy numbers, but has a more military focus to it.

The term "pretexting" became a part of the national lexicon two months ago with the disclosure that Hewlett-Packard had hired investigators to discover which member of its board leaked information to reporters.