Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 20:55:44 GMT From: David Smallberg Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Sprint Says NO to Increased Account Security Message-ID: Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 267, Message 9 of 11 Lines: 45 In article fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes: > I just spoke to Gena Fulmer at the above number [ 1-800-347-8988 ]. She > admits to having heard quite a few complaints, and indicated that they would > likely be acted on. Maybe Rochelle Richter and Gena Fulmer don't talk to each other. I just got off the phone with Ms. Richter. Here's the history of the system: a survey of customers showed that people would love automated access to the kinds of information that they had previously had to ask a human operator for. Originally, a caller would give his Sprint account number to access the system. This was a pain for many people, and *lots* of complaints were received; things were changed so that your phone number is accepted instead. Sprint examined the Privacy Act, and does not disclose things that the Act prohibits (call details, customer name or address). They do, of course, give the total amount of your bill. Her claim is that the cost of the programming change to require a PIN is not yet justified by the number of complaints. There is some consideration of flagging a number to disallow automatic billing info access. It's a numbers game -- oodles of people like the system, whereas I'm only the 19th person to have called her (she's keeping a list, to let us know if things change). I gave her the "boss suspects you're looking for another job" and "jealous boyfriend suspects you're doing a lot of calling to that guy you met from far away" scenarios. I didn't think she felt that these were problems, given that no one's complained that it's happened to them. One thing she said was "Well, you can't have perfect security -- someone who really wants the information could probably find some way to get it." Oh, and since the number is that of Sprint's executive offices, I would imagine that those of you who've been having serious billing problems could direct your complaints there (You probably already have). David Smallberg, das@cs.ucla.edu, ...!{uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!cs.ucla.edu!das