MSN Money - Privacy alert: Your phone records for sale

"You can't turn around these days without discovering some new way that your privacy is being invaded. Egregiously.

But the recent furor over 'pretexting' and the sale of consumer phone records on the Internet is missing a couple of important points.

Yes, less-than-ethical companies posed as consumers or even phone company employees to get copies of people's phone records -- whom they�ve called, when they called, plus the names and addresses associated with various cell and landline numbers. The practice is called pretexting because these companies get the records based on the pretext that they're someone they're not.

And yes, the records thus purloined could be purchased for about $100 a pop on any one of at least 40 Internet sites"