I got to violate Andy Roddick.
All right, it’s not what you’re thinking, and it had
nothing to do with me stalking any tennis court, armed only with a
hand full of date-rape pills and a head full of dreams.
You see, as everyone probably knows by now, hackers recently got
into Paris Hilton’s Sidekick cell phone and stole all the
information the party girl had in there, from phone numbers, to
text messages, to random notes to herself.
And when they posted all this inside information on the Internet
the other morning, my roommate and I totally got in on all the
invasion. But by the time we got to the phone list none of the
celebs was picking up their phones. We only reached Roddick, who
quickly said hello and then passed the phone off to a friend, and
Lindsey Lohan’s voice mail, which said something like,
“Hey, I’m busy doing lines off a prostitute’s
ass, leave a message!” (Fine, not really).
But it’s not just poor Paris that the hackers have
targeted; just this week they got into has-been Fred Durst’s
Sidekick, only to let loose a stomach-turning sex video he recorded
with this hand-held multi-talented device.
All this recent hacking has left me wondering one thing: If I
get a Sidekick, will all my personal sex tapes and address books
find their way to the World Wide Web?
You’ve probably seen them; they’re those bulky James
Bond-looking contraptions carried by self-important people that
flip open or pop out or unfold or whatever when you want to use
them. As suspected, celebrities love them. Everyone from Paris and
Snoop Dogg, to Molly Shannon and Wayne Newton are riding this new
wave in cell phone technology.
In fact, Hollywood is one of the most dangerous places to have a
Sidekick, according to The New York Times in a recent report that
found that out of all the people walking the Oscar red carpet this
year, over 100 people were susceptible to privacy invasion.
Please, there are so many people who strut across the red
carpet; a lot more than 100. And unless Clint Eastwood is strolling
along with his Oscar in one hand and his Sidekick in the other, I
doubt that it’s the celebrities who are really
vulnerable.
Still, for those of you nut cases ready to trade in your
hand-held for a carrier pigeon, I decided to play a little
detective and find out how at risk we really are.
First I put in an investigative call to the ironically titled
Danger Inc., the company that manufactures the now-infamous
Sidekick. But nobody answered my call, and I didn’t have
enough patience to call back more than twice.
So I decided to go straight to the source: T-Mobile (in case you
don’t know, they’re the main distributor of the
Sidekick). But after waiting on hold for about 20 long and
frustrating minutes listing to a recording of Catherine Zeta Jones
blabber on and on about “no hidden fees,” I was only
left wondering whether she has a speech impediment or an accent.
Eventually Zeta Jones was replaced by an equally frustrating
operator named Monique who could only assure me that my Sidekick
was “about as safe from being hacked as a computer.”
And I, for one, feel pretty protected knowing that I’m only
vulnerable to pasty computer-nerd shut-ins and pornographic pop-up
ads.
Still, I know hackers pose more of a threat than their side
parts and sweater vests might suggest. So I thought I’d
figure out how hard it was to figure out how to hack into
someone’s phone yourself.
That’s when I stumbled upon a Web site that boasted,
“How to Hack into Cell Phones, Hilton Style.”
Apparently all it took to get to the heiress’s private jewels
was to figure out the answer to her secret password question:
“What is the name of your favorite pet?” Paris,
however, has never been too secretive about the answer to this one
ever since she wallpapered Beverly Hills in posters, desperately
searching for her missing chihuahua Tinkerbell. So unless
you’re as transparent as her, you’re probably safe.
But above all, there’s really no reason that makes me feel
more safe than this: Nobody cares about you. And nobody hacks into
someone’s phone who they don’t care about. Except Fred
Durst.
Hate computer nerds, too? E-mail Scott at
jscott@media.ucla.edu.