Coveney claims to have previously been hacked.

Coveney had already said they were contacted via Telegram and he doesn't use Telegram. So we have to ask how was his phone compromised, if it was compromised ? If he doesn't use Telegram the messages could not have come from his phone. Simon is protesting too much.

Sometimes Simon never reads his texts before deleting them. He ignored Regina and the Whistleblowers back in 2017.

Texts suggest Simon Coveney knew of Air Corps whistleblowers (irishexaminer.com)

Significant inconsistencies have emerged in the Government’s account of how it managed the warnings it received relating to concerns for Air Corps technicians’ health.

The Irish Examiner has learned that, in January 2016, Ms Doherty forwarded a text message onto one of the whistleblowers that she said came from then-Defence Minister Coveney. The message claimed Mr Coveney would call this whistleblower the next day.

Despite their efforts, none of the three whistleblowers have been contacted directly by Mr Coveney or his Department.

Its like that time Fianna Fails Michael McGrath didnt know how to use Twitter and he was trying to perform a search for ILoveMilfs .com but he clicked into the wrong box and he tweeted ILoveMilfs .com out to a few thousand of his followers instead. Milfy McGrath was there like 'I was hacked, I was hacked'. Eh no Michael you were searching for Milf porn at 2 in the morning without a clue how to use Twitter and literally got caught with your pants down.

who says he still using the same phone/number

If it's a non story, why has it not gone away?

Everyone knows it's BS? I don't think so and neither do others on here.

" If it was true, it would be newsworthy."

Coveney's name in the headlines of all Irish papers Friday.

Broadsheet have only one paper up for today so far.

The Examiner. Coveney's name is in a headline.

Not surprisingly this bit of information has been ignored, not once, or twice, but 3 times by the usual crew. Instead, they want to talk about Nigerian princes and 'simple' Simon. All for the banter and craic, like! They give themselves away.

Where does he say that he is still using the same phone and phone number?

Ah, so now the goalposts have shifted from

a) Deleting data is not preduent security advice

to

b) Simon wasn't hacked at all (as per the article in the Irish Times, it appeared he was, a fact ignored by you for the past 24 hours)

to

c) The data was subject to FOI, when this is pure speculation by you.

Not all data is subject to FOI, again people seem to be taking an inch to run a mile with some facts here.

But sure, post up some more memes about Nigerian princes to cover up the fact you seem to be changing your angle of attack numerous times.

Again, you are forgetting some pertinent bits.

The amount of effort to try and get some 'gotcha' moment is both hilarious and deliciously ironic.

Because it limits the amount of information that the hacker can retrieve when/if they access your device.

To give an example, the Israeli hacking tool “Pegasus” was potentially used to hack into a large number of European ministers and leaders phone in 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/revealed-leak-uncovers-global-abuse-of-cyber-surveillance-weapon-nso-group-pegasus

The suspected countries that used this tool are India, Morocco, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Hungary.

The tool allowed the user to remotely pull any data from the phone such as messages and emails, activate the microphone, get the owners GPS, etc.

If these countries are using this tool, you can be sure as **** that countries with more sophisticated espionage technologies like the UK or Russia are using tools on countries in their political interest, like Ireland.

If I were an Irish minister I would be wiping my phone every couple of weeks at the very least.

So why wasn't Leo deleting texts/data?

Do you mean wiping his phone every couple of weeks? If so, I have no idea. I could speculate a couple of ideas:

1). Didnt get around to it/didnt care as much about security. Politicians can be lazy when it comes to security. Trump used a 6 year old Galaxy S3 while he was president. That phone was so old that it could no longer run the latest, and most secure, versions of Android, and there were known unfixed vulnerabilities in the operating system that could be used to take complete control of the device. It was nuts that he was allowed to keep going with it.

2) Leo isnt the minister of Foreign Affairs, so he he wouldnt be as big a target to get hacked by foreign countries as Simon Coveney. Covney was much more involved in Brexit, for example. I can see why the UK, Russia or even the USA would target him more.

3) He did wipe his phone, but kept a backup offline. Apple and Android often do this automatically now, if you wipe it from a computer.