Rishi Sunak’s personal phone number has been reported to have been published online in a massive security breach. According to The Sun, the prime minister was targeted by social media pranksters who posted a video online of the phone ringing before Mr Sunak’s answerphone message kicked in. The Prime Minister was granted a new phone number when he took office a year ago, but the pranksters’ video appears to show his personal number still in use. The video, which The Independent also saw, shows a phone dialling Mr Sunak’s number. Before the PM announces his name, an automated voicemail reads “voicemail service for.”
It comes two years after it was revealed that Boris Johnson’s phone number had been posted online for 15 years
It is unclear how the number was obtained, and Downing Street has stated that it will not comment on security matters. A Conservative MP on the home affairs committee said he was “sure it is very inconvenient for him,” but he wasn’t convinced there was a security violation. “But I’m not sure it constitutes a security breach when thousands of work colleagues & friends probably had it already – as well as hostile intelligence agencies,” the member of parliament stated. It comes two years after it was revealed that Boris Johnson’s phone number had been posted online for 15 years, at the bottom of a press release. Former UK national security adviser Lord Ricketts argued at the time that it was in Mr Johnson’s “own interest to be much more digitally secure.”
“I’m talking really of the most senior politicians in sensitive positions, whose phone conversations might well include sensitive material, commercially sensitive material, people trying to lobby them for favors, or tax advantages, or talks with foreign leaders,” he told the BBC. “And there, I think you do have to accept, just as you do – you can’t just walk around on your own and talk to anyone you like – equally you shouldn’t be in a position where anyone who once had your phone number can get to you when you are a prime minister. “And that’s one of the inconveniences of being prime minister but it’s for their own sake and their own protection really, that access to them ought to be controlled and monitored.”
Mr Sunak stated last month that he was unable to hand over some WhatsApp chats to the Covid probe, which is looking into the government’s response to the pandemic because he had changed phones numerous times and had not backed them up. The discovery regarding his long-term phone number, which he used as chancellor and during last summer’s leadership contest, called the allegation into question.
