Q&A: Tory MP tells how she fell victim to hack attack

 

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 18 Jun 2010 at 09:12

The Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts of Conservative MP Therese Coffey were hacked this week, with offensive comments posted casting aspersions about Prime Minister David Cameron's wife.

Here, she tells us how it felt to be a victim of an attack and what she was able to do to recover her online identity.

Q. How did you find out about the hacks and what were your initial reactions?

A. I'd been out of phone contact because you can't have your phone on in chamber and when I could turn it on again there were loads of messages from people who had been trying to call and say there was a problem. Fortunately that happened within an hour of the hack so I could so something about it.

I was actually quite upset really because what they had put on wasn't nice – it wasn't jokey or funny - it was actually horrible stuff about David Cameron's wife.

How do you think they broke into the accounts?

A. Someone got into my email account and I don't really know how that happened – I might have been sloppy on a shared computer, or they might have guessed it. Either way it has made me a lot more alert. I guess they got into the other accounts via information in the email account.

How did you go about removing the offensive material and changing passwords?

A. It was easy enough to change passwords and take back control of the blog and Facebook, but it was a different matter with Twitter. There was no phone number and I've sent an urgent support request but they haven't come back to me, which is really annoying because the damaging messages are still up there. Really frustrating, and I'll be pursuing that with Twitter. I know they're not as big as Yahoo or the big professionals, but they should have some security procedures in place.

Have you contacted the authorities and what are you doing to follow up?

A. I have got an email address that could be of the person that might have done it - I got that from Yahoo - and I spoke to the parliamentary IT people because I had to change the security settings on my parliamentary account, just in case. They couldn't really help so I am going to take advice on what I can do.

I notice that you still have a mobile phone number on your Facebook profile. Isn't that surprising for someone that's just had a security breach?

A. I know it's there and it's because when I was a candidate I wanted to be accessible and now that I'm a member of parliament I still feel the same. Actually very few people phone me on it, but they are amazed when they actually get through. And I have a separate parliamentary phone and I don't publish that number. Some MPs actually publish their home numbers, but I'm not going to do that.