How celebrity phone numbers were hacked by NI

It's the scandal that won't go away - phone hacking. But just how did the journalists intercept celebrities' personal messages?

The background

It's been the scandal that's embroiled journalists, a list celebrities, a police force and a government, and the News International phone hacking story is just refusing to go away. Suspicions first became aroused back in 2005 when it was revealed that employees at British Sunday newspaper, News of The World had been targeting celebrities and were using their contact celebrities to hack into their mobile phone voicemail and access personal voicemail messages. Operation Weeting With journalist Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire arrested, the Metropolitan Police announced that it would be opening an investigation into phone hacking on a wider scale. It began on 26th January 2011, was called Operation Weeting and revealed exactly why and how the celebrities phones were being hacked.

How the phones were hacked

Phone technology It's easier to say it now, knowing what we know about mobile phones, but back in the day all phones came with the same default pin code to access voicemails from another phone. Generally, it was 1234, or 0000. So theoretically, if you knew someone's phone number, you could access their voicemails - and all the secrets that came with them. Although he denies ever using this to hack into celebrities' voicemails, Ex-Mirror editor Piers Morgan wrote about this in his autobiography, The Insider: "That little trick of entering a standard four-digit code allows anyone to call that number and hear your messages." The fall-out So with a list of phone numbers - or more importantly a list of celebrity phone numbers - journalists now had access to all level of highly personal voicemail messages that they could then use as a basis for their stories. A simple loop-hole in the new technology or a gross invasion of privacy? As part of a celebrity search, Operation Weeting revealed famous people such as actress Sienna Miller and interior designer Kelly Hoppen were both targeted by the News Of The World. The News of the World paid out £100,000 in damages to Miller, a figure which raised eyebrows and with a bit of further digging revealed just how strong the culture of intercepting these message was at the newspaper - and the amount of people targeted. At the time of writing, more than 24 celebrities are looking into whether they were targeted by the News of the World. The paper itself has now been shut down by Rupert Murdoch's News International, but the investigation continues into how widespread this practice was across tabloid journalism.