The Security Mentor

Bill collectors, police officers, and sometimes stalkers can buy your bank statements, phone records, and other information from specialty firms that collect private data.

The industry is largely unregulated.

How do they get their data? Executives from 11 such firms got a grilling on that question last week in Congressional committee hearings. In particular, the Congresspeople "asked whether they sold 'personal, non-public information' that had been obtained by lying or impersonating someone."

All eleven of them took the Fifth. Every single one of them.