Tips to Protect Your Voice Mail from Hacking

via Forbes...

While there’s been extensive coverage of the News Corp. phone hacking cases during the past few weeks, nobody has really addressed two relevant elements of the story: the legal liability (both criminal and civil) for such conduct and the underlying problem which allowed the media to gain access to confidential information: the insecurity of most voice mail systems...

Personal actions
• Do not use default passwords;
• Use more than a four digit PIN, and make them random. Do not use your date of birth, year of birth, or set the digits in ascending or descending order;
• Make sure your carrier requires the use of a PIN every time you access your voice mail;
• Have your carrier require a special password to access information about your account;
• Demand that your carrier immediately notify you of any attempt to improperly access your account via email or SMS;
• Ask your carrier to block multiple invalid PIN attempts on your account, which will then requires a call to customer service to reset it;
• Delete sensitive message once you retrieve them, and do not store them in the system any longer than necessary. Remember, there is no way to determine who has accessed your account or listened to your messages;
• Check the settings on your system to determine if messages are being forwarded to numbers you do not recognize;
• Use the most complicated password that is possible to set up, and change it frequently. (more)

UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Widens - Piers Morgan Under Pressure

Can Piers Morgan survive? It is a question his enemies and fans on both sides of the Atlantic are asking with increasing urgency. The position of the former tabloid editor turned CNN chat show host looks vulnerable as the phone-hacking scandal continues to unfold with fresh revelations almost daily.

But unlike other senior journalists caught up in the scandal, it is not Scotland Yard that has been responsible for turning up the heat on Morgan. Rather, in what his enemies might suggest is proof that there is such a thing as divine retribution, it is Morgan's unchecked vanity. Morgan, who edited the Daily Mirror for nearly a decade until 2004, faces questions over a series of boasts that suggest he was at the very least familiar with the practice of phone hacking.

Morgan admitted in a column for the Daily Mail in 2006 that he had heard a message left by Sir Paul McCartney on the phone of Heather Mills, then his wife, in which the former Beatle sounded "lonely, miserable and desperate". The disclosure has prompted Mills to claim the message could have been heard only by hacking into her phone. (more)

News of the World - Phone Fiasco - Yet Another Victim

UK - The mother of a murdered child who became the face of a News of the World campaign to change British sex-offender laws says she was on the list of a private investigator who hacked phones for the tabloid— a development that is likely to generate more scrutiny for Rebekah Brooks, the former News Corp. executive who edited the paper at the time.

The mother of a murdered child who became the face of a News of the World campaign to change British sex-offender laws said she may have had her voice mails hacked. Paul Sonne also reports that James Murdoch will remain Chairman of BSkyB.

Sara Payne, in a prepared statement, said Thursday that police had found her details on a list seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the now-closed News of the World and intercepted mobile-phone voice mails. Ms. Payne is the mother of Sarah Payne, an eight-year-old British girl who was abducted and murdered in July 2000 by a man who had a previous conviction for abduction and sexual assault against a child. (more)

Having Trouble Keeping Track of the Phone Hacking Scandal?

The Telegraph key pounds it out.

Click to enlarge.

Below is a list of the alleged victims of phone hacking. This includes public figures, celebrities and others who have accused News International newspapers of hacking, those who are currently bringing legal action and those who brought successful cases in the courts.

Alleged victims
Milly Dowler
Parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
Families of servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
Relatives of victims and victims of 7/7 bombings
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Madeleine McCann’s family
Colin Stagg, accused of Rachel Nickell murder
Elle Macpherson, model
Wayne Rooney, footballer
Hugh Grant, actor
Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall
Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat deputy leader
Helen Asprey, former royal aide
Michael Mansfield, barrister who represented Mohamed Al Fayed at the Princess Diana inquest
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, private secretary to Princes William and Harry
Peter Mandelson, former Labour minister
David Davis, former shadow Home Secretary
Andrew Neil, BBC presenter
Boris Johnson, London Mayor
Sir Ian Blair, former Metropolitan Police commissioner
Paddy Harverson, Prince of Wales’ communication secretary
Vanessa Feltz, presenter
Lembit Opik, former Liberal Democrat MP
Cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, Brazilian man shot dead by police
Paul O'Grady, presenter and comedian
John Yates, former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner
David Cook, former Metropolitan Police detective chief superintendent

Seeking legal action
Steve Coogan, actor and comedian
Sky Andrew, former Olympian
Nicola Phillips, assistant to Max Clifford
Andy Gray, broadcaster
Paul Gascoigne, footballer
Sienna Miller, actress
John Prescott, former Labour Deputy Prime Minister
Brian Paddick, former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner
Brendan Montague, freelance journalist
Chris Bryant, Labour MP
Jude Law, actor
Ryan Giggs, footballer
Chris Tarrant, presenter
Leslie Ash and Lee Chapman, actress and former footballer
Kelly Hoppen, stepmother of Sienna Miller
Kieren Fallon, jockey
George Galloway, former MP

Successful cases
Max Clifford, publicist
Gordon Taylor, chief executive of Professional Footballers’ Association
Jo Armstrong, legal advisor to Gordon Taylor
Tessa Jowell, former culture secretary (offered settlement)
David Mills, lawyer and ex-husband of Tessa Jowell (offered settlement)
Joan Hammell, former aide to John Prescott (offered settlement)

(more)

The Number 1 Spybusters Tip that would have saved most of these people from being hacked...

Make sure your voice mail and cell phone both have decent secret passwords. 

Don't want to see your name on a list like this someday? 

Read more tips from IMCPB)

"Everybody wants to get in on the act." It's not just phone hacking.

UK - Millionaire Labour donor David Abrahams claims he was a victim of phone hacking.

Mr Abrahams, who was plunged into the epicentre of a media storm in 2007 when he was accused of making thousands of pounds of illegal donations to Labour, has revealed how he believes he was the victim of secret bugging...

Now he claims the current phone hacking scandal is simply “the tip of the iceberg.

And he claims bugs and other recording devices were placed in his home, prompting him to call in experts who discovered the electrics at his property had been tampered with.

Today he warns there could be much more to come from the hacking scandal. He told the Chronicle: “It’s not just News International and it’s not just phone hacking.

“They put little video cameras in car aerials and bugs and devices in people’s houses. There are a lot of other factors as well as phone hacking. I’ve had it in my own life far too many times.” (more)

Project X: Murdock Phone Hacking Scandal Continues to Grow

"Argh, Miss Brooks"

The U.K. police investigation into alleged phone hacking took a dramatic turn on Sunday with the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit who resigned on Friday.

London's Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, said they arrested her around noon Sunday (7 a.m. EDT) when she appeared by appointment at a London police station. She remained in custody as of early afternoon Sunday and hadn't been charged.

It's the 10th arrest by police in a dual probe investigating allegations of voicemail interceptions and corrupt payments to police. The allegations focus on the News of the World, News Corp.'s Sunday tabloid that the company recently closed after 168 years amid an escalating scandal. (more)

"Our Miss Brooks"

Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin's "Project X" is a sound system that allows him to eavesdrop on the entire school. (download MP3)

Smartphone Hacking Becomes News of the World

It's never this obvious.

The “phone hacking” scandal unfolding in the UK has demonstrated how trivial it is to gain unauthorized access to voicemail and other information stored on smartphones. Ignoring basic security steps only makes it easier.

With the help of Kevin Mitnick, CNET reporter Elinor Mills demonstrated just how easy it can be to hack into someone’s voicemail. This was done in the wake of the “phone hacking” scandal that has erupted in the UK in which employees for News of the World hacked into a murdered girl’s phone and materially interfered with the then ongoing police investigation. It’s now grown much larger even than that one terrible incident, and this is, of course, an extreme example of the harm that can be done to people with unsecured mobile phones. (more)

If you own a smartphone you are a viable target,
and you really need to ask yourself, 
"Is my cell phone bugged."

Etienne Labuschagne on Business Spying and Eavesdropping

“Many people think that this sort of thing isn’t happening — that corporate espionage is just something you see in movies,” says Etienne Labuschagne. “But that’s just not the case. As more people use these kinds of methods, more of them are getting caught. We live in an era where you can buy bugging gear for a few dollars … and where people will move mountains to get information first.”

Labuschagne says News of the World was simply “one of the unlucky ones that got caught doing it”. He suggests the newspaper got complacent after having gotten away with the practice for so long.

“It used to be easy to say people were just paranoid,” says Labuschagne. “I’m dealing with more and more clients every day who have these problems.”

The only way to ensure one’s phone calls, SMS messages and voice mails are entirely secure is to encrypt conversations, he adds. “The only way to be 100% sure is by using point-to-point encryption, where your unit and mine are both encrypted.”

With corporate espionage on the rise, he says that many companies are opting for counter surveillance strategies to protect their information, particularly because prevention is always easier than prosecution. “I recently dealt with a company that knew it had been bugged by competitors. But the problem is that in order to prosecute, the company would have to produce extensive evidence. Even then, that doesn’t stop it in the interim.”  (more)

Phone Hacking Kills a Multi-Million Dollar Business

News Corp.’s News International unit announced that it will shut down its News of the World tabloid, and that this Sunday’s edition will be the last one, amid a deepening phone-hacking scandal... The News of the World is the U.K.'s best-selling Sunday paper, with an average circulation of 3.7 million people, according to analysis firm TGI. (more)

The alternative... Being sued out of business? FutureWatch - News of the Universe 

Why this is important to you... You are responsible for your employee's actions. Ethics, like security is a top-down corporate culture. A strong corporate counterespionage program sends two messages: spying is not tolerated (in either direction), and employees are obligated to pro-actively protect corporate intellectual assets. One visible reminder of this are the corporation's quarterly audits for electronic eavesdropping devices. (more)

British Tabloid Hacked Missing Girl’s Voice Mail

The voice-mail account of a British schoolgirl who went missing in 2002 and whose murdered body was discovered six months later was repeatedly hacked by the News of the World tabloid at a time when no one knew what had happened to her, a lawyer for her family said Monday.

According to the lawyer, Mark Lewis, the newspaper not only intercepted messages left on the phone of the girl, Milly Dowler, 13, by her increasingly frantic family after her disappearance, but also deleted some of those messages when her voice mailbox became full — thus making room for new ones and listening to those in turn. This confused investigators and gave false hope to Milly’s relatives, who believed it showed she was still alive and deleting the messages herself, Mr. Lewis said. (more)

Rupert Murdoch's Newspapers Are Spying On... Each Other

Well, the whole News Of The World phone-hacking scandal just took a rather amusing turn.

The Independent reports that Rebekah Brooks, former editor of The Sun, was one of the victims. Private detective Glenn Mulcaire, working on behalf of News reporters, hacked her phone "more than 20 times."

Considering the big names in the story -- Sienna Miller, Jude Law, etc. -- Brooks, a relatively minor figure, wouldn't normally be news. Except that in addition to editing The Sun, Brooks previously served as an editor at NotW, the very paper accused of spying on her. (more)

"Is My Cell Phone Bugged?" interview on KZSB – AM 1290

If you are in the Santa Barbara, CA area Tuesday, tune in to  KZSB – AM 1290. You will hear Mike Williams interview me about eavesdropping spyware on smartphones and other mobile communications privacy issues. This new book, Is My Cell Phone Bugged? Everything you need to know to keep your mobile communications private is the topic of the interview.

The program starts at 10:00 AM (PST) and will be rebroadcast Tuesday evening at 9:00 PM and again on Saturday at 1:00 PM. The feed is also available at newspress.com. Once the show has been recorded I will post the link. ~Kevin

Eavesdropper Stung by Victim... who happens to be Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant is trending after he turned the tables on an eavesdropping tabloid. Grant, a victim of voice-mail hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, secretly taped journalist Paul McMullan coming clean about the electronic snooping and then sent the recording to the New Statesman.

According to the transcript, McMullan admits tabloid reporters have listened in on stars, prominent politicians, even Prince Charles.

The News of the World has printed a public apology, but the paper is facing a number of civil claims from celebrity victims, including actress Sienna Miller. (more)

Editors would know if journos were hacking phones

New allegations have emerged on just how insidious phone tapping was at London tabloid News of the World, as one of News Limited’s senior Australian lieutenants suggests editors should have known the practice was going on. (more)

More UK Wiretaps and Voicemail Hacks

UK - Nick Brown, the former chief whip and key political ally of former prime minister Gordon Brown, became the latest public figure yesterday to say that he believes his private calls and messages were eavesdropped.

The Newcastle MP revealed that he believes his landline was the subject of an "amateurish" bugging operation around the time his homosexuality was made public in 1998.

Five years later, he was also approached by police investigating voicemail hacking claims and warned that his mobile phone may have been illegally accessed. The former Cabinet minister is the latest senior Labour figure to come forward with claims that his phone calls and messages were hacked. Tessa Jowell, the former culture secretary, revealed that her phone may have been accessed as recently as this week and she has hired lawyers to discover who hacked into her messages on 29 separate occasions in 2006. (more)

News of The World Phone Hacking Case Re-Opened

UK - Scotland Yard said Wednesday it has reopened its investigation into illegal phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of The World.

The Metropolitan Police said it had received “significant new information” from executives on the paper relating to events going back more than five years. The news comes as News International said it had fired the newspaper’s assistant news editor Ian Edmondson, after spending days trawling through his notebooks and emails in an attempt to establish the extent of phone hacking on the paper. (more)

Sienna Miller's Eavesdropper Dropped

Britain's News of the World tabloid has suspended a high-ranking journalist for eavesdropping on the voicemail messages of movie star Sienna Miller, media reports said. (more)

Voicemail Hacking Pays $3,270.00 Per Week?!?!

Actress Sienna Miller is seeking damages from the U.K.’s News of the World newspaper for hacking the voice mail on three of her phones to get personal information, according to court documents.

Miller claims the newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., paid private investigator Glenn Mulcaire 2,500 pounds ($3,270) a week to eavesdrop on personal messages between her, her friends and business associates. The actress, who also works as a model and fashion designer, claims news editor Ian Edmondson approved the work contract. (more)

Hoist by a Voicemail Petard

Employees at a CBS affiliate in Anchorage left an accidental voicemail for an aide to GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller in which they discussed and laughed about the possibility of reporting on the appearance of sex offenders at a Miller rally. And they chatted about responding with a Twitter alert to “any sort of chaos whatsoever” including the candidate being “punched.”
 

Jerry Bever, general manager for KTVA, said in a statement that a call to Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto to discuss the candidate’s planned appearance on a newscast wasn’t disconnected after the conversation ended. The call took place during a KTVA staff meeting to plan coverage of that evening’s Miller rally in downtown Anchorage. (more)

FutureWatch - The Privacy Party is Over

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. 

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally. (more)

It will.