Mobile Security Scare makes UK Boris Johnson dump his old phone number

The old phone number of Britain’s PM Boris Johnson that has been freely available on the internet for the past 15 years is no longer available with him and this was confirmed by his cabinet secretary last week.

As retaining a phone number for longer periods attracts unnecessary attention from hostile nations, the PM was forced to give up his old phone number only to be replaced by a new one since the third week of May this year.

The Military Intelligence, Section 5 shortly known as MI5 took the initiative of explaining to the PM the reasons why he needs to dump his old number that was available on the internet for free for the past 15 years.

And after understanding the disadvantages Mr. Johnson is said to have allowed the security services to confiscate his old number with a brand new one inducted into a high-end Samsung smartphone.

In this digital world, every popular celebrity is either susceptible to a cyber-attack or an espionage campaign. And the best example to confer at this instance is the suspected play of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s in launching a WhatsApp based spying campaign on the Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos phone in 2018 that led to the leak of the photos that confirmed the affair of Mr. Bezos with his pilot girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.

MI5 suggests that as per the state security protocol it has destroyed the old phone and its number forever but hasn’t released any details about the new device and the security tweaks and installations are done on it to prevent any data breach of the device in the future.

Downing Street has played down the whole incident as a highly secretive activity that has to be kept away from the media for reasons best known to them…..makes complete sense…isn’t it?

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Naveen Goud
Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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