Verizon Wireless admitted late Thursday that several of its employees broke company rules by accessing and viewing President-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone account. The company’s president and CEO Lowell McAdam apologized to the President explaining that the account had been inactive for several months and that it was a voice flip phone, rather than a smartphone with e-mail and other data.

"As the circumstances of each individual employee's access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions. Employees with legitimate business needs for access will be returned to their positions, while employees who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action," McAdam said in a statement.

The mobile in question was not the Blackberry that Obama usually uses, but a plain-vanilla flip phone that had been inactive for several months. Neither e-mails nor the contents of any calls would have been exposed, but the account information may have included the type of list of incoming and outgoing calls, with their times and durations, found on a monthly billing statement. By the way Obama’s addiction to his BlackBerry on the campaign trail is well know but, as the New York Times reports, the President-elect may have to give up the device when he takes office next January, due to concern over presidential communication going over e-mail and the risk it could be intercepted. U.S. government computer systems are frequently targeted by hackers and foreign intelligence agencies.

Asked to disclose exactly what kind of information was viewed, the duration and frequency of the unauthorized access, Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson declined comment beyond the company's statement.

If the employees who looked at the information "made false or fraudulent statements" in "interstate commerce" in order to gain access, however, their actions may conceivably fall under the Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006, which was intended to ban the practice of "pretexting." That law also provides penalties (including fines and up to 10 years in jail) for anyone who attempts to sell or transfer confidential records.

Obama already had his passport files snooped into by federal contractors, while an Ohio agency director was suspended Thursday for allowing state employees to search databases for information on Joe the Plumber, the Ohioan who became famous after confronting Obama about his tax policies.

Verizon Wireless, the nation's No. 2 wireless carrier by subscribers, is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J. and has 71,000 employees nationwide. Part of the problem is that most companies concentrate their security efforts on protecting their systems from outside attacks, Matt Shanahan, senior vice president at AdmitOne Security, told the E-Commerce Times.

Earlier this year, for instance, it was discovered that State Department employees sneaked a peek into the passport records of presidential candidates Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.