Hacking into a cheese sandwich

Labour party leader Tony Blair was given sandwiches by a Mr Robert last week. We know this fascinating news because the BBC was handed the information by a sad eavesdropper who had been hacking pager messages somewhere in the heart of London.

It is not clear how the man found out about Mr Blair's sandwiches (believed to be cheese and tomato) but it does raise an important issue about security both over analogue pagers and of course the Internet.

One obviously frowns on the miscreant who has nothing better to do with his days than hack into politicians' private correspondence, and in the same week similar information was received about Princess Diana.

Several private messages from our much-loved ex-highness appeared on the Internet via a paging service which had also been hacked into. The BBC didn't tell us exactly where on the Internet the information was to be found, neither did it reveal what she actually said. But if the reports are true, analogue pagers are definitely not to be trusted.

Raymond O'Konsky, news editor at What Mobile, is not surprised that data sent over pagers has reached the Internet. "As far as analogue pagers are concerned the data is not encoded or encrypted at all. It's an open day for anyone who understands the technology." Apparently the issue has been worrying experts for years. O'Konsky explained: "So long as the interceptor has information on your pager number and the frequency at which the pager company sends out the data, it's totally unprotected."

Digital phones are a different story, however, and O'Konsky is clear there is no danger. "You cannot intercept a digital message. GCHQ might be able to, but even they would have problems dealing with the encryption.

Even Emails sent over mobile phones are safe." But it wasn't only the darlings of British society who took a pounding last week. An increasingly frail Netscape was floored by a Java test carried out by publishing company Ziff Davis in the US. Running Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0, the test showed Navigator to be significantly slower than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 when running Java in consecutive tasks.

According to the tests, the "most striking result is that Internet Explorer 3.0 is the fastest Java environment currently available". Bizarre? No.

Netscape's Navigator has been known to be the slower of the two since the products shipped. Numerous tests have been done, including PC Week's own head-to-head which showed Explorer to be the superior browser. What is bizarre is that the article puts Explorer in second place when it comes to buying decisions for users of the Net.

The reason is short term, however; there are currently far more Navigator-optimised sites than Explorer sites - and besides, Bill Gates has more money.