Turning The Screws On Phone Tapping

What a fuss over the News of the Screws phone "tapping" practices.

Tell me what half decent hack hasn't tried this old trick during their time on the tabs? Phone tapping is a bit of a misnomer, it was much less sophisticated.

It was more of a case of phoning the generic mobile answering service and if the phone's owner was stupid enough not to have PIN protected their message inbox you typed in a standard default code and you were in like Flynn.

It might still work, for all I know.

Maybe the Screws had developed this technique - I would like to think so given it was paying some bloke £100k a year for this service.

It's laughable if predictable that our lying, cheating, thieving, scumbag MPs are queuing up to nail Andy Coulson and various News International execs. What a godsend that it takes the heat of their own underhand practices for a while.