>Has anyone else been paying attention to the HP pretexting scandal. Pretexting is when someone has enough information about an individual, they can pretend to be them when contacting companies and getting personal information.
>
>Basically the lady who's CEO of HP now got upset that CNET reported some information on their website that they could only have received thru a member of the board of directors. So, without informing the board, she hired a law firm to investigate.
>
>The law firm hired an investigation firm who was able to call up phone companies, supplying SSN's, so they could get copies of phone bills.
>
>Now there's proof that reporters at CNET and the Wall St. Journal were victims of pretexting also. As usual HP is contending their law firm assured them pretexting is an acceptable investigative technique.
>
>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14721854/


This highly unusual board dustup has been over all the news. (Just a minor point -- Patricia Dunn is the chairwoman of the HP board, not the CEO). It's bad publicity for them just when they had put a few good financial quarters between themselves and the last batch of bad news.