Barack Obama Cell phone Breached, Hacked By Verizon Employees
Barack Obama has received an apology from Verizon Wireless, which is the Number 2 cell phone service provider in terms of number of subscribers, after some of its employees were found to have gained unauthorised access to his mobile phone records. Personal cell phone account owned by Barack Obama which has been inactive for several months was confirmed to have been accessed by “many” of Verizon’s employees — all of whom have been placed on administrative paid leave pending an internal investigation into which did so for a good reason.
“We apologise to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day,” the company President and CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement issued late on Thursday.
Mr Obama’s spokesperson stressed that the security of voicemail messages and emails were not breached in the incident.
“We were notified on Thursday that employees had accessed the records of an old cell phone no longer in use,” said the spokesperson. “No voice or emails were listened to or read.”
The account, however, has been inactive for several months, Verizon Wireless said adding that the c
ell phone instrument on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smart phone designed for e-mail or other data services.
Telecoms experts believe that the only information staff would have managed to glean from looking at Mr Obama’s account would have been a list of numbers called, and the date and length of each conversation.
The news is another blow for the tech-savvy president-elect. Mr Obama has already been warned he may have to give up his BlackBerry amid fears it poses a security risk.
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