BARACK OBAMA'S BLACKBERRY

            It was in 2005 I saw an online article about someone hacking into Paris Hiltons blackberry and reading her personal e-mails. Then less than a year later there was a rumor that Paris had hacked into Lindsay Lohan’s blackberry and sent offensive messages to her friends from it. Neither of these so called “news” stories caught my interest at the time because both of these girls don’t seem to have any private information that isn’t divulged to the public on a weekly basis via supermarket tabloids. However, recently President elect Obama gave up his blackberry in accordance with the Presidential Records Act of 1978 as well as to secure secret and vital information. It was when I heard this that the Paris Hilton story jumped back into my brain and I was stricken with fear by a simple question. If Paris Hilton can crack a “crackberry” then what is stopping anyone else?  

            Obviously I say this with some jest but I do have real concern about who can gain access to the e-mails and other information I have stored on my blackberry. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office the federal cybersecurity team whose responsibility is to protect the computer networks of both government and private enterprise “isn’t up to the job.” This is pertinent because according to my research a blackberry is no easier to hack into than a computer. Although the cybersecurity team is supposedly not up to the job I was comforted to discover that the wireless activity on a blackberry was no easier to access than my desktop. However, unlike my desktop a blackberry is much easier to steal, loose, or misplace and unless you have it protected with a password it would be easy for a person to see all of your prior activity on that phone. For this reason it’s important not to use the remember me function when paying bills or accessing private e-mails so that if your blackberry does go missing no one will be able to access your private information. It’s also important to know that most company issued blackberries can be accessed via the company server. So blackberries aren’t that easy to access unless you are an IT person of questionable character or you actually have the device in hand and even then there are measures that can be taken to protect your information.

            While I was writing this article it was revealed that some Verizon wireless employees had accessed Barack Obama’s cell phone account. Verizon President and CEO, Lowell McAdam, issued this statement. “This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account. The account has been inactive for several months. The device on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smartphone designed for e-mail or other data services. We apologize to President-Elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day.” It is my understanding that the employees who accessed the account could only view numbers that had been called or received from the phone and I am sure if there was anything scandalous about that information it would have hit the papers by now. One thing is for certain, if you are famous, or in the case of Paris and Lindsay infamous, no information is safe even it’s its not that important.