Fearful that pedophiles might use the information to stalk victims, a major telephone book publisher has stopped providing children's names and phone numbers through its information service.
Metromail Corp., a subsidiary of R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., says it took the action after a critic said publicly that the service provided pedophiles a "road map" to addresses and phone numbers of children.The critic said he was merely sounding an alarm about a dangerous invasion of the privacy of America's children.
Metromail on Nov. 21 stopped providing the addresses and phone numbers of minors on a national "look-up service" available to the public through a 900 number and is reviewing its policy of providing the information over the telephone, said spokeswoman Diane Dunne.
Metromail contends it made the change as a result of statements by John Phillips, who runs a database company and has tangled before with the Chicago-based Donnelley, the nation's largest commercial printer.
"He was in essence . . . suggesting improper uses of very legitimate data, so we became concerned that he was in fact giving a road map to pedophiles," Dunne said.
Phillips said in an interview that he wrote Donnelley's directors after a lawyer for his company discovered he could get information about the lawyer's own 5-year-old son through the service.
"It's so outrageous, and no one can really understand what the business justification was for offering kids' names on a 900 number," Phillips said.
Phillips runs Aristotle Publishing Inc., a Washington company that supplies voter lists and software to politicians. Aristotle also competes with Metromail for database business with government law enforcement agencies.