Keeping your voicemail private

Keeping your voicemail private

While you may not be as popular as the celebrities targeted in the News of the World hacking scandal, even the average person’s mobile phone voicemail box is vulnerable to hackers.

How do they do it?
Hacking a voicemail account is incredibly easy. All the hacker needs is a piece of software readily available on the internet, your phone number and your service provider. Once they have this information, they open the software on their computer, put in your number and call your service provider’s voicemail service. The software tricks the voicemail service into believing they are calling from that number and, (if you have no pin code) they gain access to your voicemail. Unfortunately, many mobile users leave the default pin code in place or have an easily guessed code.

How do you prevent your voicemail being hacked?

Apart from the obvious, deleting voicemail from your phone completely, there are a few measures you can put in place to prevent anyone being able to hack into your voicemail account.

The first thing you should do is set up a pin code. No matter how convenient it is to not have to enter a pin code when calling your voicemail, it takes two seconds to enter those four numbers.

Some phones are sold setup with a default number which is easy for hackers to break such as 0000 or 2468. If you haven’t changed this code or you have not yet set one up, it is important to use a very strong pin code which cannot be easily hacked. 1234 is a prime example of another pin code that is easily hacked. Setting a pin code involving your home address or birth date repeated twice is easy to remember and extremely hard to crack. It is suggested that you do not use credit card pin codes for security reasons.

Are you unsure of how to setup your voicemail with security features? A trip down to your local mobile phone service provider will yield results as the staff will be able to help you set it up correctly.