If you have been watching the news, this story has probably bubbled into your consciousness already:

Did Iceland Teen Call Secret White House Phone?

Short version: Iceland teenager calls a “top-secret” phone number in the White House and gets in trouble.

The thing it makes you think about is how many phone numbers there must be in the United States that lead to important and/or high-profile people. When Paris Hilton’s cell phone contact list was published two years ago, a bunch of these private numbers were exposed:

Paris Hilton’s cell phone hacked?

In the United States there are a maximum of 10 billion numbers (7 digits plus three area code digits equals 10 billion possible numbers). But not all the area codes and exchange codes are used, so the number is more like a billion. There are numbers that lead to the cell phones of every member of congress, every governor, every celebrity, etc. Even if the person never tells anyone the number, the number is still “out there” waiting to be dialed randomly.

At some point you would expect there to be a web site that tells you where every single number goes. Then there will be no such thing as a “secret number”.

So how would “important” people combat this? You would think that they would have “white list” systems that only let certain numbers call the number.

There are lots of secret phone numbers out there, like this: God of War – Secret Phone Number

See also: Area code listing, by number

See also: How Telephones Work