Fraud is fraud ... though in some cases, fraud appears to be legal.

If, for example, a company wants to harvest your private phone records — whom you called, and when — they can call your cell phone service and pretend to be you.

This seems wrong on so many levels, but there's no law to stop businesses making money through this practice, known as "pretexting."

These companies may have garnered some private information, such as a partial Social Security number, and then used it as a pretext, convincing a customer service rep to release more data.

Then they place the data for sale on the Web.

Pretexters are barred from obtaining financial data in this way, but there is no prohibition from such fraudulent posing, as long as no financial data is passed on.

This is an enormous legal loophole that compromises consumer privacy so outrageously that it's hard to believe it's not against the law.

Hard to believe, but true.

Finally, a bipartisan push in the U.S. Senate is aimed at making it illegal to pose as someone else while calling a phone company, or for an employee to sell the data. That bill ought to sail through to the White House as quickly as possible.

Security gaps and identity theft are rampant enough in the information age without handing scammers and crooks our private data on a silver platter.