Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick phone has been hacked, and now the web is flooded with the actual phone numbers of a stunning array of Hollywood celebrities as taken from her address book.

So how in the world can anybody hack into somebody’s phone? Well, apparently, T-Mobile’s security implementation for the Sidekick is similar to that of Yahoo’s: In case you forget your password, it simply asks a simple question such as “What’s the name of your pet?” and, if you answer right, it then assumes that you are indeed Paris Hilton.

The thing is, Paris is so proud of her pet chihuahua that everyone and his Google knows that its name is Tinkerbell.

So now, not only do the masses know the private phone numbers of celebrities such as Christina Aguilera, Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne, Eminem, Lindsay Lohan and Anna Kournikova, but they even have access to her very personal pictures and emails. Decent or otherwise. Tsk tsk.

This raises an interesting issue: all the high tech security systems in the world will be utterly, utterly useless if, in the end, they will still resort to asking a question as lame as “What’s your favorite color?” in order to verify somebody’s identity.

Take it from me: Your web email accounts are not safe from your friends, your acquaintances and especially your enemies. All it takes is for them to know your middle name, your birthday, your favorite fruit, or your pet’s name… and they can now have full access to your accounts. So never, ever plug the obvious answers into these “in case you lose your password” data fields when you’re setting up your mail accounts.

Time to bring out that thesaurus…