Phone hacking at the Daily Mirror [VIDEO]

Did you think it was just the disgraced (and now defunct) News of the World that was hacking into the voicemail of celebrities in its pursuit of salacious stories?

Think again.

Today, as the BBC reports, tabloids owned by the Trinity Mirror group have admitted that they were up to the same dirty tricks, and is now paying compensation to some of those affected.

Former England football manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, BBC executive Alan Yentob, and Eastenders soap actors Shane Richie and Lucy Benjamin are amongst those who the company – which publishes a number of papers including the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – are coughing up some cash for.

According to the Beeb, much of the hacking took place in the early 2000s when Piers Morgan was editor of the Daily Mirror.

Watch the following video to learn more about the fascinating ins-and-outs of this story, including Jeremy Paxman’s claim that Piers Morgan taught him how to hack phones, and a brief karaoke performance of a Beatles song from me.

Paxman also recalled to the Leveson Inquiry how Piers Morgan had teased Ulrika Jonsson about private phone messages she had shared with Sven-Göran Eriksson.

For his part, Piers Morgan says that he has never hacked a phone, never told anyone to hack a phone, and has never published a news story based upon a phone hack.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity 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 analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.