HP settles pretexting cases
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Hewlett-Packard settled cases with The New York Times Company and three BusinessWeek journalists Wednesday after being caught spying on reporters in 2006.The parties did not disclose the size of the settlements. HP has already paid $4.5 million in a civil-case settlement with the State of California related to the incident.The New York Times plans to donate its settlement money to charity, said Terry Gross, the attorney representing the company and the BusinessWeek reporters.HP said it was pleased to put the matter behind it and happy that the award would go partly to charity.The case followed revelations in 2006 that HP had hired investigators to try to find the source of internal company leaks to the press. The investigators, however, were found to have used fraudulent methods, known as&#160;pretexting,&#160;to obtain the reporters&#39; phone records. State and federal laws have since banned the practice.&quot;The New York Times and the BusinessWeek reporters brought this action because they believed that this type of illegal activity aimed at silencing the press should not be allowed,&quot; Gross said.The scandal shook up the executive leadership at HP, with the chairman, another board member and the company&#39;s general counsel all&#160;stepping down.HP faces other outstanding lawsuits relating to the incident.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.The settlement with CEO Group, doing business as Check Em Out, bars the company and its operator Scott Joseph from marketing or selling phone records, and it requires the company to give up $25,000 of its profits from selling phone records. Selling phone records to third parties is illegal under federal law, the FTC had charged.The FTC in May 2006 filed complaints in U.S. court against five Web-based companies that obtained and sold confidential phone records to third parties. In addition to the settlement with CEO Group, the FTC has settled two other cases and obtained a default judgment against a fourth company. The complaint against the fifth company is still active.The FTC&#39;s complaints came after complaints from privacy groups and members of the U.S. Congress about pretexting, when someone obtains a telephone customers&#39; records without permission under false pretexts. In many cases, companies offering phone records over the Internet were calling telephone carriers and pretending to be the targeted customer. In September 2006,&#160;Hewlett-Packard revealed it had been spying on some of its board members and journalists in an attempt to uncover the source of boardroom leaks, and HP officials later said their investigators had used pretexting to obtain phone records.The Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits customers&#39; phone records from being disclosed unless &quot;upon affirmative written request by the customer.&quot; The FTC charged the five Web-based companies of engaging in unfair business practices.The settlement with CEO Group prohibits it from obtaining, marketing or selling consumer phone records or other consumer personal information except where allowed by law, the FTC said in a news release. The settlement, approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, includes a judgment of $222,381, the amount the company earned by selling phone records, but the defendants said they were able to pay only $25,000. If the court finds that the defendants misrepresented their finances, the entire amount will be due, the FTC said.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee probing theÂ Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) pretexting case has issued more subpoenas to compel witness testimony at a Thursday hearing. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Energy and Commerce Committee issued subpoenas Wednesday for five people identified as "pretexters," data brokers who sometimes obtain access to confidential records under false pretenses. HP has been embroiled in a scandal over its hiring of private investigators who engaged in possibly illegal pretexting to investigate news leaks from HP's board to reporters. Served with subpoenas, according to the Subcommittee, are: Bryan Wagner, a private investigator from Littleton, Colorado; Charles Kelly, of the CAS Agency in Villa Rica, Georgia; Cassandra Selvage of Eye in the Sky Investigations, of Dade City, Florida; Darren Brost, of Austin, Texas; and Valerie Preston from InSearchOf Inc., of Cooper City, Florida. Wagner was identified in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal article as a suspect in the pretexting of phone records of HP directors, employees and journalists who cover the Palo Alto, California technology company. The Journal reported that Wagner told an investigator that he smashed his computer to pieces with a hammer, destroying data that was saved on it. The article also said that the destruction of the computer may hamper an investigation by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office into possible illegal activity by people at HP or by the private investigators HP hired. The five who were subpoenaed Wednesday have been added to a list of witnesses that also includes HP's Chief Executive Officer and President Mark Hurd and former board chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned last Friday because of the scandal. While Dunn and Hurd have volunteered to appear, two other HP executives involved in the investigation were subpoenaed: senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci. Hunsaker "left the company" and Gentilucci "resigned" effective Tuesday, said HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. Also subpoenaed are Ron DeLia, operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a Needham, Massachusetts, private investigations firm, and Joe Depante, owner of Action Research Group, of Melbourne, Florida. HP has acknowledged hiring both those firms in its leak investigation and that they used pretexting to track down personal phone records. Â
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Hewlett-Packard Co. said on Thursday it reached a civil settlement with the California attorney general's office related to its board-leak investigation that ultimately led to the departure of its former chairman.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) targeted three  reporters among the nine journalists whose phone records it sought through a controversial method known as "pretexting," the computer maker confirmed on Sept. 8.
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Promises not to do it again HP has settled allegations over its failure to disclose why one of its directors resigned in the midst of last year's boardroom mole fiasco.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - On the heels of a similarÂ suit filed Thursday by Verizon Wireless Inc., Cingular Wireless LLC on Friday suedÂ private investigators used by Hewlett-Packard Co. to obtain phone records of a CNET News.com journalist. Cingular filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Atlanta against Charles Kelly and CAS Agency Inc. alleging they used pretexting -- or pretending to be someone else to obtain phone records -- to get information from Cingular about customer Dawn Kamamoto, a CNET journalist that HP was investigating. Cingular also named "John Does 1-100" and "XYZ Corps. 1-100" in the suit to accommodate other private investigators that may not have been named who also were involved in obtaining information from Cingular, said company spokesman Mark Siegel. "Sometimes it's hard to identify who is in these companies and who runs them," he said "We [used those terms] to accommodate for the vagueness of the industry." During Congressional hearings Thursday about HP's investigation of journalists -- including Kamamoto and writers from the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek -- Kelly and CAS Agency were identified as investigators that HP used to obtain phone records information through pretexting, Siegel said. The defendants called customer service agents posing as Kamamoto to obtain her personal information, and also gained unauthorized access to her online account information, Cingular alleged in its filing. They then sold that information to HP. HP executives, including Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Congressional Committee on Thursday about an investigation of journalists that took place in 2005 and earlier this year in an attempt to find out who at HP was leaking sensitive information to the press. The scandal has already forced Patricia Dunn to resign as HP's chairman and sparked investigations by the California attorney general and the U.S. House of Representatives. On Thursday, Verizon Wireless filed suit in New Jersey against investigators who used pretexting to obtain information about an HP director and that director's spouse, and then sold that information to HP. In its suit, Cingular is asking that a judge require the defendants to pay punitive damages to the company and be permanently restricted from: contacting Cingular for any reason, obtaining information about Cingular customers and advertising that they can obtain phone records from wireless companies about their subscribers. Cingular is also asking for the return of any information obtained about Cingular customers to the company. Cingular's Siegel said this is not the first time his company has filed suit against companies that have used pretexting to obtain customer information. "They call themselves data brokers -- we call them data burglars," he said. The company currently has several cases pending against other investigators who have used pretexting, which is not technically illegal, although Cingular believes it should be, Siegel added.
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Hewlett-Packard, the largest maker of personal computers and printers, agreed Thursday to settle an investigation by the California attorney general over its spying tactics, according to a person briefed on the agreement, who asked for anonymity because the details had yet to be made public.
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Not so Agile Business Comment HP grows leakier by the hour: today's Pretexting Scandal episode, brought to you by an unnamed source of the NY Times reveals that the company "conducted feasibility studies on planting spies in news bureaus of [CNET and The Wall Street Journal] as part of an investigation of leaks from its board". Check out those janitors, before they check you out.â¦
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Hewlett-Packard Co. and EMC Corp. agreed to let an arbitrator decide how much Hewlett-Packard should pay for infringing on three EMC patents related to computer data storage. A federal jury in Worcester found HP liable for infringement in May 2004, and a trial to set damages was scheduled for Feb. 16. The two sides instead agreed to ''private, binding arbitration," ...
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(InfoWorld) - Washington's attorney general has settled the first case prosecuted under the state's 2005 Computer Spyware Act. The settlement. announced Monday, is with antispyware vendor Secure Computer LLC. The White Plains, New York, software companyÂ was accused of marketing its product via deceptive spam and pop-up ads, which offered free spyware scans that always detected a problem with the computer that was scanned. The company and its president, Paul Burke, will pay $725,000 in legal fees and $200,000 in penalties, and will reimburse Washington state customers $75,000, said Paula Selis, senior council with the attorney general's office. "Given the scope of the defendants' practices and the amount of consumer harm out there, we feel this is a very fair settlement." More than 1,100 state residents purchased the company's Spyware Cleaner software since it went on the market in 2004, Selis said. Those customers will now be e-mailed by Secure Computer and offered a refund for the $49.95 product, under terms of the settlement. Secure Computer, which admits no wrongdoing in the matter, is also prohibited from usingÂ deceptive marketing techniquesÂ to promote its software, and the company must now review the advertising of its marketing affiliates to make sure they comply with the settlement. That seems like an unlikely possibility, however, because Spyware Cleaner was pulled from the market shortly after the lawsuits were filed in late January, and Secure Computer LLC is now out of business, according to the company's Web site. Representatives from Secure Computer could not be reached for comment. Secure Computer and four of its business partners were sued by Microsoft and the Washington attorney general in January, but charges against three of the men have already been settled. A fourth man, Manoj Kumar of Maharashtra, India, could not be located, the attorney general's office said. Â
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Hewlett-Packard has settled a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation regardingÂ the resignation of Tom Perkins from its board.
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Hunsaker also on list Patricia Dunn, the former chairman of HP, and four others are to face charges over The great HP Pretexting Fiasco.â¦
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has agreed to a $14.5 million settlement in the California civil lawsuit related to the company's spying scandal.
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A California judge Monday dismissed state charges against a figure inÂ the Hewlett-Packard (HP) spying caseÂ becauseÂ the defendant already pleaded guilty to similar federal charges in the case.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. agreed Thursday to pay $14.5 million to settle the case brought by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who accused the computer maker of unfair business practices in its efforts to root out the source of boardroom leaks to the media.
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FTC says pretexting violates federal law, targets companies involved in HP scandal.