Previously, mobile phones were supplied with a default factory-set personal identification number that could be used to access voicemail messages from another phone or abroad. Customers were advised to change this Pin number, but very few actually did — the chance to access voicemail messages arose due to a basic security oversight.
Phone hacking is illegal, and classed as an unlawful interception of communications under Section One of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act It was one of the oldest in the UK, sold 2.
On 24 July , the Crown Prosecution Service announced it would be charging eight people with phone hacking, including Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor and Rebekah Brooks, a former editor and executive at the company. And former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott, who alleged his phone was hacked, thought the decision was simply a gimmick. In April, the News of the World admitted intercepting the voicemail messages of prominent people to find stories.
It came after years of rumours that the practice was widespread and amid intense pressure from those who believed they had been victims. Royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking in January after it was found they targeted Prince William's aides. Detectives recovered files from Mulcaire's home which referred to a long list of public figures and celebrities.
The scandal widened this week when it emerged that a phone belonging to the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler had also been hacked into, and some messages deleted. Leading brands, including Sainsbury's, Ford and O2, pulled their newspaper advertising and shares in BSkyB fell on fears that the scandal could hinder parent company News Corp's bid for the broadcaster.
On Wednesday, the government promised an inquiry in the hacking allegations, but the nature of it is undecided.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. James Murdoch: "These allegations are shocking and hugely regrettable". Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World, said: "Whatever price this staff are paying for past misdeeds, nothing should diminish everything this great newspaper has achieved.
The newspaper was once Murdoch's flagship title although its stablemate, the Sun, is now more profitable, but it remained a totemic title around the world.
In it sold 8. Even now, only a handful of English-language newspapers can match its circulation. The closure followed another day of high drama, during which more companies, including O2, the mobile phone company 3, Sainsbury's and Boots said they would not be placing adverts in the paper on Sunday. James Murdoch admitted to staff it was "a matter of serious regret" that he had authorised a six-figure payment to a phone-hacking victim several years ago, but blamed others at the company for his decision.
Miliband has called for the deal to be blocked. Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been highlighting the phone-hacking scandal at the paper for two years, said: "Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. It is the revulsion of families up and down the land as to what they got up to. The British tabloid press market is world famous for its propensity to sleaze and scandal going right back to the s.
The Conservative government of the s almost got to the point of legislating after a number of high profile cases of tabloid journalism where reporters were breaking into hospital rooms where celebrities were critically ill and then trying to write up stories. There was a whole number of fairly damaging scandals at that time in the 80s.
The press tried to clean up its act. The Press Complaints Commission PCC was set up in response to that wave of scandals and although a number of people criticised the PCC for not being very effective and lacking legal teeth, I think it did have an impact in curbing some of the worst excesses of the tabloid press.
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