Last week Paris Hilton made headlines across the Internet when her cell phone contents were hacked. Once again a victim of both the Internet and digital technology, Hilton lost more than her dignity this time. It would seem that the Internet hates Hilton, but loves her birthday suit.

The Hilton Hack, however, does more than just humiliate and defame. Instead, it should raise eyebrows in the information security field for consumers. In addition to the rather risqu‚ photographs of the hotel heiress, the hacker(s) released Hilton’s personal notes and her phonebook filled with the names and numbers of celebrities for the whole wired world to see. As they say, “hilarity ensues.”

Sure, it might be funny to prank call celebrities on their personal, private phones – “Is this Vin Diesel?” “Yes…” “Chronicles of Riddick sucked!” – but there is a larger issue of cell phone security that needs to be addressed. While hackers might be targeting the mobile phones of the pop culture elite, it won’t be much longer before Joe Citizen becomes the next victim.

Several theories have surfaced surrounding the hack of Paris’ T-Mobile SideKick II. T-Mobile claims that “someone had access to one of Ms. Hilton’s devices and/or knew her account password.” It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think that Paris would give out her password, but for a moment let’s give her a bit more credit than that.

Last October, Nicolas Jacobsen was charged with two counts felony computer intrusion. Jacobsen was able to access T-Mobile’s 16.3 million customer database. This included Social Security numbers, voicemail PINs and e-mails. Jacobsen was even able to read e-mails from the U.S. Secret Service, which eventually determined his identity and apprehended him. Just about the only information he didn’t have was credit card numbers.

With the recent Hilton hacks, serious questions must be addressed about the security of cell phone carriers’ networks. If personal information and confidential internal government memos are suspect to being compromised, the consumer base of these companies have every right to be concerned about the safety of their privacy – from the prying fingertips of predators.

While the FBI is investigating the recent hack and celebrities are changing their numbers, customers and security experts are questioning every possible hole between their phones and their carriers’ network. Attacks could come from both server and client sides of the equation. A hacker could even do something as simple as a social engineering con: call up a customer pretending to be a technician for the phone company and he needs the customer’s name and password.

It might not be the fault of T-Mobile that their database was hacked, or their high profile customers had personal information leaked across the blogosphere; but they do have a responsibility to alert their customers that their private information isn’t as secure as they might believe it to be. If their database was hacked once before and led to the proliferation of internal government memos, cell phone carriers have a responsibility to either shut down service or fix the problem.

In the meantime, the Internet waits for the next big leak. I heard Fred Durst has a new video online, but it’s not about music…