THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 11, 1995 TAG: 9507110300
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Even though Virginia's main phone company has canceled plans to sell its lists of telephone customers, private entrepreneurs routinely take information from the pages of phone books and sell it.
``People all over the country and sometimes all over the world purchase it,'' said Susan Hendry, a saleswoman for Digital Director Assistance Inc. The Bethesda, Md., company offers an electronic, nationwide directory of 93 million residential and business listings.
``Anybody from a genealogist, a reunion planner, a police department, a public library, a medical student looking for former classmates'' may want the $199 computer directory, Hendry said. ``It's like having every telephone directory in the country right at your fingertips.''
``The cable and telephone companies that come into our homes in the future are going to have a massive amount of information about us,'' said Del. George W. Grayson, D-James City County.
Grayson was among thousands of consumers who told Bell Atlantic-Virginia last week that they did not want a phone utility jumping on the information bandwagon.
Several thousand people called the company to opt out of a proposed plan by Bell Atlantic to sell existing residential customer lists to outside marketers.
The company decided to stick with its policy of not selling the lists, but company President Hugh Stallard said the move would not have much effect on consumer privacy.
``Let's be clear. There would have been no new sales calls to customers had we begun to sell our lists. There will be no fewer since we will not,'' he said.
The information at issue comes from optical scanning of telephone directories from across the country. ``It's all published, public information,'' Hendry said.
At Pro CD Inc. in Danvers, Mass., a buyer can get a nationwide directory of residential and business listings on CD ROM disks for $169. Its information also comes from telephone directories, with the company buying a copy of every directory printed in the country.
``It's not impeaching anyone's privacy. It's published information to anyone who can access directory assistance,'' said company spokeswoman Julie Garner.
Pro CD customers include direct marketers, small businesses and people looking for lost relatives. ``One woman found her father after 39 years,'' Garner said.
For more specific information, people and direct marketers frequently turn to American Business Information Inc. in Omaha, Neb.
Need a list of every florist published in the Yellow Pages of American telephone directories? How about a list of consumers by age, income, home ownership, children?
Julie Schlachter, an account executive for American Business, says customers use such lists to ``make business decisions, send out gift catalogs and do direct marketing and telemarketing.''
American Business' information comes from outside vendors, telephone directories, the U.S. Census, auto and voter registrations. ``What it boils down to is any information that's in the courthouse,'' said senior sales representative Peggy Hill.
Bell Atlantic considered selling its residential lists because of dramatic changes in the list business since 1991, Stallard said. That's the year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that white page telephone listings no longer could be protected by copyright. by CNB