This weekend it emerged in the Mail on Sunday that the Prime Minister’s phone number, as well as the numbers, passwords and personal email addresses of much of the cabinet, are available on the internet to anybody for £6.49. They’re made accessible by a website allowing users to search through hacked data leaks with ease. A potential threat to national security…

With the mobile phone numbers of half the cabinet in the public domain, Guido is amused to see the Tories taking the issue more seriously at their conference, with new environmentally friendly paper lanyards being sponsored by a “world beating… quantum-safe cyber security” company – Arqit. They claim to be “keeping safe the data of our governments”. We’re in good hands…

Guido can also reveal that the vast majority of MPs have similar information traces on the site. The passwords available to view are almost universally insecure, often simply comprising lower-case plain text or respective constituency names. This all comes despite parliamentary authorities splurging taxpayer funds on cyber-security, with the head of the parliamentary digital service earning £175,000 a year. The information wouldn’t even be difficult to hide from public view, entries can be removed within three clicks…