Thursday, July 23, 2009

Prankster Gets Verizon's CEO Private Address, Visits Him to Discuss Privacy


John Hargrave tracked down Verizon CEO's private address and cellphone number. Then he went to his home—megaphone in hand—to ask him to stop Verizon's lousy privacy policies. The video is quite funny and his message is clear:

When we don't have privacy, then freaks with bullhorns start showing up. Keep our phone numbers unlisted. Keep our cellphone records private. Keep us safe in your loving arms, Ivan.

So damn right. To give you an idea about how easy it was to get this information, the only thing that John did was sign up for one of those "free cell phone records" listings and scan it for the cells and home addresses of the CEOs from the big three: Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, and Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon. There were a lot of Stephensons and Hesses, but only one Ivan Seidenberg. He confirmed the information and off he went in his car, ready to deliver his message about how important privacy is by showing him exactly how these awful information keeping policies could affect us.