Can You Hear Me Now?

Here’s an interesting follow-up to our Blamestorming ethics question. A story that broke this morning presents the curious case of a woman whose extramarital affair was exposed by her cellular phone provider. It seems that she was using a cell phone to carry on an affair with an unnamed third party when the cellular carrier decided to consolidate all of the accounts being billed from the same mailing address; the result was a single billing statement and a substantial savings for the customers, so the company apparently felt there wouldn’t be a problem with this. Unfortunately, the consolidated bill allowed the woman’s husband to find the hour-long cell phone calls to an unknown number, call that number, and discover the affair. He then walked out on his cheating spouse and sued for divorce. None of this is particularly unusual; what made this story an Internet sensation is that the woman in question is now suing the cellular company…

According to the story in the Toronto Star, the customer is claiming that if the company hadn’t unilaterally and without her permission decided to merge her account (which was in her maiden name) with that of her (now ex-) husband, the affair would never have been detected and her life would not currently be in ruins. She further claims to have been so upset by these proceedings as to have lost a very lucrative job, required medical treatment, and generally lost everything – all because of the cellular carrier’s betrayal of her trust. All of which may be true, in fact, but does not address the fact that she was still having an extramarital affair while married to someone who would react to such a betrayal by walking out on her. Which makes blaming the cellular company for everything a bit difficult to swallow…

On the one hand, giving someone else access to a customer’s cell phone records without the customer’s permission is generally considered an invasion of privacy, and would be illegal in most of the states of the U.S. and most of the Canadian provinces as well. On the other hand, there is no such law in Ontario, and the cell company certainly didn’t force the customer into doing something that would predictably destroy her marriage (and potentially her entire life). Currently, the company is denying all responsibility for the situation, saying that they did nothing wrong under national or local law, and there was no way a reasonably prudent person could have known that such a situation would result. It remains to be seen how the court will rule, of course…

Personally, I have to believe that if you’re married to someone who would have that violent a reaction to infidelity, you would probably know that, which makes going ahead and having an affair completely asinine. On the other hand, given that people frequently make use of cell phones to conceal conversations that they don’t want overheard, the practice of merging cell phone accounts without asking permission first is very obviously going to result in some kind of breach of confidentiality sooner or later, even if it can’t be predicted in any specific case. It’s one of the best examples of Murphy’s Law I’ve ever seen, and a reminder to all business people: if something can go wrong, eventually it will – so don’t take chances and don’t assume that people won’t be doing something outstandingly stupid when you do…

And regardless of what you do for a living, don’t commit illicit acts using instruments that leave an automatic paper trail – unless you’re prepared to face the consequences when everyone in the world finds out what you did…