I had an interesting chat with a "support person" at a local telco today. About a phone number that seemed to be disconnected, the disconnected tone was all I got. Since it was a number I knew and it had been connected, I wanted to know if, or when it might be reconnected, or if there was a fault, perhaps? You could do this sort of thing yonks ago, when there was a single national telco. Asking about or reporting faults was straightforward, and 'technicians' would tell you all. These days we have 'privacy', and this new company's policy was that they could not give any "account details", unless you could prove you were the account holder. I pointed out, several times, that I already knew one of the details that they refused to confirm - the number I dialled gave a disconnect tone, so how could that be private information? And why was it a security problem, what was the risk? They couldn't tell me. I also pointed out that even if they told me nothing except: "we can't give out any details to non-account holders", I could still learn about the number having been reconnected, by simply dialling it. I could write a computer program to call the number, every hour of every day until it 'found' a ringtone. The information I was asking for was not an "account detail", it was already in the public domain. Did they really, really mean that if I dial a random number and someone answers, I should hang up and immediately forget?? Not tell another soul??? These people are ridiculous, they don't know what security is. These "policies" that companies adopt are pedantic, pathetic attempts at something or other, but have little to do with actual privacy or safety. They kept accusing me of asking them to provide private information - the tossers.
I intend to contact this telco once again, to ask if they can provide a list of phone numbers that are connected to their network. I expect they will once again insist the information is private, and they would be in breach of national data privacy laws. If I tell them I'm writing a program that can scan the entire national network, that I know enough about telecomms and what information you can copy off it, just by dialling one number after another (caller ID, provider ID, etc), will they insist that I will be breaking some law? What if I insist that I not only can do this, I will post the results on the net for all to see? Will their brains explode in a paroxysm of negative logic??
