We Need to Secure Reverse Mobile Phone Directory Services to Prevent Data Leakage
In our age of rapid technological advancement one is getting used to being able to locate any kind of information he/she needs on the World Wide Web, which has become an integral part of our lives and an ever-growing knowledge base. More and more often one finds him-/herself searching for information on people around them and those one barely knows. As our private lives are going online, we cant help but expect the knowledge base to fill up with private data as well. One good example of such services would be reverse mobile phone directory. The name is, pretty much, self-explanatory. Once in a while we all tend to get phone calls from unknown numbers. If youre as much of a not picking up a call from an unknown number type as I am, you know that one is still very curious as to who it was. Thats where the service steps in – input that phone number and get data on the caller up to his/her address. And the good news is: Yes, it works!
As well as much of the current technology (the Internet included), reverse phone lookup was initially a restricted-access project. It was born in paper-form as so-called grey pages and was later on upgraded to an on-line service. Officially, it is meant to be used strictly by various law enforcement agencies and is not intended for the general public. However, these days a simple web search spawns hundreds of websites providing the lookup service to anyone.
The biggest problem while attempting to perform such a lookup would be singling out scam websites, which claim to provide the service, as opposed to the ones, which actually do. Theres a number of ways one could go about it, with the easiest (but not the most reliable) being intuition – if one sees the website requesting way more information than it really needs to perform the task or simply looks suspicious, that could be one sign of potential scam. Be sure to check the websites reviews as well, as former customers might provide useful insights in the capabilities and deliverables of the particular website. Another option would be to choose a paid website over a free one. Of course, you will then have to pay, however, often its a sign that the website does provide what one came there for. Especially, if their refund policy looks fair as well. Additionally, a lot of free lookup services will only respond with a single piece of data, say, just the first name of the person, leaving out other, often essential, information, which can only be accessed by means of payment.
Now to the bad news. ? Certainly, with this kind of technology becoming so wide-spread and publicly available one cant help but wonder as to the security implications of it. We want to have the benefits for ourselves, but we also want to preserve our privacy. We enjoy being in control and being able to identify every incoming call in a number of clicks, but get paranoid about keeping our own data safe and secure. Unfortunately, we cant have both at the same time.
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