Greenberg on how to protect phone records

Marketwatch columnist Herb Greenberg has written on his blog about how business journalists can prevent their phone records from being hacked into in the wake of the disclosure by Hewlett-Packard that it investigated its board members to find out who was leaking information to reporters.

Greenberg stated, “Here’s how I now protect myself so it will never happen again. First, I opened my online phone account , which the perpetrator — believed to be an investigator hired by a company that didn’t like my stories – was kind enough to originally do for me! (If you haven’t opened it, anybody can do so by acting dumb with online-account issues under the guise that they are you.) This crook who broke into my account even clicked the little box that said I didn’t want to pay bills by mail again. I guess he figured out of sight, out of mind. One source, who didn’t find out about that in time, actually had his phone shut off for nonpayment!

“I then created a password only I and my family know for use with my local and long-distance accounts. I did the same for my cell phone. It’s about as fool-proof as you can get as long as investigators aren’t paying off phone company insiders for records.”

Read more here.