Big Brother Inc.? Gizmos Evade, or Snoop On, Callers
May 16, 2011
As large phone carriers race to smarten up their networks, an enterprising array of tiny companies are also trying to reach out and grab customers eager to dodge unwelcome callers. Some of their futuristic products, typically peddled by mail or on the Internet, chill privacy experts. Among the more intriguing: The JunkBuster, a $99 gadget from PreFone Integrated Products Inc. of Troy, Ohio, plugs in like an answering machine and wards off telemarketing calls. Before the phone rings, callers hear a prerecorded message that warns telemarketers to hang up, citing the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Law of 1992. It also tells them to ``Place this number on your `Do Not Call' list.'' (Should the salesperson persist, PreFone promises to assist customers in collecting the fine they are entitled to under the law.) Ordinary callers are told to press 5, and the phone rings the usual way. For $150, PreFone sells another gizmo for identifying callers by the sound of the telephone's ring. A user's mother, for example, might be told in advance to press 4 every time she calls, a code that triggers a distinctive ring. Hello Direct Inc. in San Jose, Calif., sells a $60 gadget that ``electronically alters your voice so it can fool unwanted callers,'' according to the company's catalog. A woman's voice can sound like a man's; an adult's can sound like a child's. The user has a choice of 16 separate ``masking levels.'' Businesses, too, are beginning to make use of similar technology -- often to snoop on potential customers. CTI Interactive Inc. of Villa markets a system that harvests incoming phone numbers via Caller ID, then uses them to retrieve the callers' names and addresses from a separate database. The software can even spit out the average income of a particular neighborhood. Among CTI's customers is Premier Ford Lincoln Mercury, a car dealership in Columbus, Miss.. At a cost of $5,500, plus a $990 monthly fee, Premier has installed a computer, CTI's software and a special Caller ID device called Whozz Calling made by Zeus Phonstuff Co. of Norcross, Ga.. With this setup, Premier's sales manager can continually monitor how employees handle customer phone inquiries. And because the name and address of every caller is automatically recorded, follow-up is easier. Premier's owner Billy Rutha says, ``now we know where our prospects are located,'' and can direct marketing accordingly. Sales have risen by 25 to 30 cars a month since the phone system's installation, he adds. Retrieving such customer information is perfectly legal. Nonetheless, privacy experts are worried. Now that businesses can identify and track even casual callers without their knowledge, phone numbers have become keys to unlock storehouses of electronic data. To weed out potentially troublesome tenants, for example, a real-estate agent could identify a caller surreptitiously and then search for his or her name in an electronic registry of landlord-tenant court cases. Another business might match callers' names with census data, to pinpoint the demographics of their neighborhoods by race or income. ``The melding of data bases raises profound privacy questions,'' says Donella Tim, a legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. ``Big Brother is not necessarily a government surveillance scheme. It can just as readily be a private business.''
