Cingular has announced they have taken out restraining orders against Data Find Solutions, Locatecell.com, and 1st Source Information Specialists, all of whom Cingular claim have been selling the cellphone records of Cingular customers.

According to Cingular, employees at these organizations masquerade as cell phone customers, or even as Cingular employees, to obtain confidential information from customer service representatives. That information, which can include private cell phone numbers and actual call records, is then sold for a fee. There are dozens of such services available, mostly through the Web.

"Cingular will not tolerate the theft of customer records," said Joaquin Carbonell, executive vice president and general counsel for cingular wireless, in a written statement. "We plan to continue fighting cell phone record theft on a number of fronts, including working with law enforcement and policymakers to crack down on Web sites that offer cell phone records for sale."

While these companies typically refer to themselves as data brokers, the name doesn't imply what these companies really do, according to the company. "We call them data burglars," said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Cingular, in a statement. "Nothing is more important to us than the privacy of our customers' records."

Verizon did something very similar recently, despite the sale of cellphone records being a fairly common occurence over the past few years.