‘We could hack the Queen’s medical records if we wanted’

It’s a story which has the potential to make the scandal over the hacking of celebrities’ mobile phone voicemails seem like small potatoes.

BBC Radio 4 has broadcast a documentary claiming that computer hackers were used by the British press to spy on politicians and the military.

According to the programme, the illicit mining of confidential information was said to be rife at one detective agency, which allegedly bragged of their ability to gain access to private medical records, tax records, pension information and so forth.

“They boasted ‘we could get the Queen’s medical records if we needed it'”.

Undercover investigations

In “The Report”, BBC reporter Jane Dodge spoke to a man who had unusual visibility on the inner workings of a private investigations agency used by…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.