Number of victims hacked by News of the World may be 'substantially higher' - Telegraph.co.uk

Specifically they are looking for direct dial numbers (DDN) – the number dialed by a mobile phone user to access voicemails.

Jason Beer QC, acting for the Metropolitan Police, told the High court: "There are, within the Mulcaire archive, records of DDNs where, on the face of it, there is no good reason for these to appear. That is strongly indicative of interception."

Asked about whether the number of numbers is larger than the 91 PINs, Mr Beer added: "The number of DDNs is substantially higher than that."

The New of the World issued a public apology over phone hacking last Friday, offering to pay damages to anyone who could prove that their phone was hacked by one of its journalists.

Mr Beer said that since then a host of people have been in touch with the Metropolitan Police attempting to discover whether they were a victim of phone hacking.

"Since the admissions last Friday, the Metropolitan Police has been flooded with enquiries. The number of people beating a path to the Met's door has increased very substantially."

The court hearing also heard that the News of the World had offered to settle the case with Sienna Miller, one of the celebrities who is suing the newspaper over fears that her voicemails were intercepted.

The court heard that the actress has been offered £100,000 plus her legal costs to settle the case. She has neither accepted nor rejected the offer.

There was also a suggestion that Ms Miller may also have had her emails hacked into as recent as 2008.

The documents seized from Mr Mulcaire had Ms Miller's email password and her legal team claim that a journalist could have known this in 2008, despite the fact that by then the Mulcaire documents were in the hands of the police.

Hugh Tomlinson QC, her barrister, explained: "The hacking in 2008 is separate from the phone records. We have linked that to the Mulcaire archive because she used the same password on her mobile phone and on her email and that was recorded on Mr Mulcaire's notes. We infer that that password was used to hack her email."

The civil cases against the News of the World are being brought by 20 people, including Jude Law, Paul Gascoigne, George Galloway, Tessa Jowell and the jockey Kieren[CORR] Fallon.

But yesterday the judge Mr Justice Vos ruled that there should be four test cases which will determine how much damages should be paid to future claimants. The tests cases, the court heard, are likely to be those of the football pundit Andy Gray, football agent Sky Andrew, Sienna Miller and Kelly Hoppen, the interior designer.

Glenn Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal correspondent Clive Goodman were jailed in 2007 after they admitted hacking into voicemails. But the Metropolitan Police was criticised for ending their investigation when, it was alleged, the practice of hacking at the paper went further.

In January this year a new investigation was launched. So far three News of the World employees have been arrested. Chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, former news editor Ian Edmondson and assistant James Weatherup have all been bailed to return in September.