Although the boardroom scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co. made the practice more widely known, buying phone records or other personal information obtained by “pretext” calls appears to have been common in parts of the business world.
In a letter to the House Energy and Commerce committee, which was investigating the issue this year, data broker PDJ Investigative Services described its customers as “law offices, repossession companies, financial institutions, collection agencies, bail enforcement agencies, law enforcement agencies and various private investigation and research companies.”
