20 years from now - "Give me your cell number if you want to live."

Or should that be happening now somewhere...future's confusing.

I don't think so. In twenty years if you think I am going to be ok with me having people selling my cell phone number I will go hit them with my walker.

MSNBC quotes Ben: [www.msnbc.msn.com]

That "ahead of our time" line is so obnoxious. Selling stolen stuff: an idea whose time has not come!

I'm looking for Sarah Connor's cell phone number.

"In response to threats of an FCC inquiry into the legality of its business practices," Intelius says it will discontinue selling your private cellphone number in its searchable online database. Liz Murray, Communications Manager at Intelius in a press release said that, "As a company, we have strived to be at the forefront of exploiting loopholes in US privacy laws for financial gain...We realize that in this instance we may have failed to adequately cover our collective ass."

She then sped off in her DeLorean, narrowly escaping capture by an armed mob of anti-tax militants and adulterous Senate committee members.

By "ahead of our time," they just mean soon enough Best Buy or other such companies will just try it eventually.

It's not the directory they're advertising on the site now, it's the "reverse search" mentioned in the press release, the caller ID, where you enter a number and get a name rather than the other way around.

It looks like the directory service has actually been stopped.

Well, that's something of a relief. Still using stolen data, though, even if it can't be abused quite as badly any more.

So the same company that sells identity theft monitoring and has a mission "to empower consumers with information services for personal and family safety" will sell my complete address history, date of birth, and name of 10 family members to any stalker with internet access.

"Forefront of innovation" = we've figured out a new way to make money off the perpetrators and the victims.

@Bohemian-- ITA! There should never be a time for people's personal information to be up for grabs. Things just get creepier by the day with all the "modern" technology we have.

No, they are way, way, WAY BEHIND the TIMES. You see, years ago, we set up this nation registry Do Not Call List. Among other things, it meant that we really didn't want to get unsolicited calls, and just wanted people to leave us the hell alone. Intelius may not have gotten the memo on this one.

Maybe we should all switch to PDAs and email.

PDAs don't ring, spam can be blocked, and emails don't take long to enter.

I'd be willing to stop using cell phones if everything came as text messages.

@KJones: Not me, e-mailing 911 for help doesn't sound like much fun. ;)

As an FYI, you can hit *67 [Phone Number] to block your caller ID from going out. Some companies will even do it for you permanently for free. It shows up as "Restricted" on my cell phone and will show up as "Anonymous" of landline caller ID systems.

To add, some people can opt to block calls that block caller ID so use with discretion.

In the future, I'll give the pizza guys a fake number.

Surely, this communications manager Liz Murray, and other executives don't have THEIR information in this database, and likely not those of their nearest and dearest.

If they do, let's group up and pay for the full information and then show them the annoying and frightening thing it is to have strangers have such personal information about you.