The 2014 Se og Hør media scandal (Danish: Se og Hør-sagen), also known as the Nets-scandal (Danish: Nets-skandalen) or the hush-hush scandal (Danish: tys-tys-skandalen), was a media and IT surveillance scandal in Denmark that broke in 2014. An IT professional employed at IBM leaked sensitive personal data from the Nordic payment services company Nets to the Danish gossip magazine Se og Hør, which allowed the magazine to obtain information on celebrities' and other individuals' use of credit cards. The scandal came to public attention late in April 2014 after the publication (in Denmark) of the journalist and author Ken B. Rasmussen's roman à clef Livet, det forbandede (English: Life, the damned). A large number of organisations and media groups were ultimately involved, including Nets, IBM, Nordea, Fujitsu, SAS, Naviair, Rigshospsitalet, the Danish armed forces, TV 2, Ekstra Bladet, and Aller Media with their magazines Billed-Bladet and Se og Hør. Background Se og Hør, which is published weekly, has long carried revealing stories about celebrities. The magazine had previously had "an amicable relationship with the famous", where subjects could prevent the publication of negative stories about themselves. This attitude is perceived to have changed with the appointment of Henrik Qvortrup as editor-in-chief, with Ken B. Rasmussen commenting that "we had no ethical standards that had to be upheld as a matter of life and death". Qvortrup introduced a monetary reward for members of the public who phoned the magazine with tip-offs that lead to published stories. The magazine's owner, Aller Media, would pay up to DKK 10,000 cash-in-hand to sources. The surveillance In 2007, Nets outsourced the maintenance of their central IT systems to IBM, which included the transfer of 71 workers. Se og Hørs so-called hush-hush source is believed to have been amongst the transferred workers. The surveillance of celebrities by this source is believed to have begun in 2008. According to investigations in the media, the source received a text message whenever a tracked celebrity used their credit card. The message was possibly sent automatically and could be received by the source at home. Soon after, the source would forward the text to journalists at Se og Hør. This may have been repeated several times a day. The source was apparently unable to add names to the list of tracked celebrities freely; only at certain times could the list be expanded with the names of new persons, after which