Hacks hack stars' mobiles

Britain's celebrities have been warned that journalists are hacking into their mobile phone message services.

PR advisors, including Max Clifford and James Herring, have told their clients to change the pin number on their mobiles from the default settings to stop journalists listening to their messages.

The hacks are ringing the stars' mobiles and keying in the default pin to listen to all of their voicemail messages, according to news site mediaguardian.co.uk.

The scheme came to light when PR companies started to notice stories appearing in the press that could only have been discovered from listening to voicemail messages.

According to one well-known PR man, some journalists even try to sabotage their rivals' chances in story bidding wars by hacking into stars' voicemail and deleting messages.

Oliver Wheeler, director of Freud Communications - whose clients include Natalie and Nicole Appleton and Geri Halliwell - said he advised his clients to make sure they changed their pin numbers after he saw a journalist accessing someone else's voicemail.