Bell recovers stolen data on 3.4 million customers

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Bell said Tuesday it has recovered data on 3.4 million of its customers in Quebec and Ontario that was stolen more than four weeks ago.



But it did include information on about 170,000 unlisted and unpublished phone numbers.


Why is this important ?
Telemarketers do much better on the sales if they have your name. If you wife pickes and the person on the other end asks for you specifically , it will likely get through. If he asks 'for the lady of the house' or ' the gentleman of the house' , you're gonna know it's a salesman and say NO ! and hang up , even if you are the lady or gentleman of the house.


The stolen data was shopped around to a number of people, Langton said. One of those people notified authorities.


Tried to sell it.
But it's data , you can make a copy easy , or many copies, how do you know he didn't sell it once or twice already ?


There's no indication that this data has been used improperly," Langton said, adding that Bell will give a new unlisted number to anyone who asks for one.


And that means nothing. Well, the new phone number is nice, though you have to inform all your friends and family of it now, which is annoying. But the value of your unlisted phone number is now toast. Why ? Because it can happen again. And again. And again.

And hey , Bell itself calls us up once a month to try and sell us a DSL modem. Regular as clock work. Just as Rogers hs someone knock on our door (have a rogers modem) trying to sign us up for their phone service. They're both dang annoying.