Blackmail and Your Cell Phone

So my manager was at a cash checking place, and he left his cell phone there. By the time he went to his car, realized it was gone, and went back in, the phone was gone. He assumed some Good Samaritan had picked it up, and he had his friend call the number to arrange a meeting place. The friend called. No answer.

A couple hours later, after a couple of attempts, the friend got a text message from a different number. Something to the effect of "If you want your phone back, arrange a meeting place. Oh, and bring money."

I'll summarize. Jerk finds my manager's phone, and decides he wants a reward. But since he can't unlock my manager's phone to do anything, he is forced to text the friend back from his own phone.

So now my manager has this guy's phone number. Open and shut case, right? Give the police the guy's number...they find out who he is...and they get the phone back. What they do with the guy is up to them, right?

Nope. My manager is mad, and he wants to get his revenge somehow. He starts calling the number, and he has his friend call the number too. Then they start sending text messages, hopefully raising this guy's phone bill a bit. He even considers offering up a fake reward so that he can get the phone back in person.

Why he didn't want to call the police? No idea. But since he didn't, I did my best to try and find the guy's name. And I found a site where you can pay $15 and get all the information you want. Name, address, relatives, etc. Everything.

I found a log on for one of those sites, for free, and it was offering it for only $9.99 for members. He didn't want that, and I still don't think he has his phone back.

But it got me thinking - does that information need to be available to the public? Especially for $10? I really don't care if the government or law enforcement has that information because I think, as a whole, they'll only use it for the right reason.

But anyone? Stalkers? Killers? Pedophiles? Do we really need to have that much information based on a cell phone number? And landlines? That information was free.

I'm all for the freedom of information. But I'm not really sure it should be this easy for anyone to get it. And it just reminds you that it's a scary world out there.