DETROIT – The News of the World Voicemail hacking scandal has many of us wondering just how safe our voicemails are. And, security experts warn, they are more vulnerable than you might think because hackers aren't always hunting for headlines, they're hunting for your personal information.
"They think it's secure, that's the biggest misconception," said Matt Burns, writer for the tech website CrunchGear.
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Burns said gaining access to a personal voicemail account is easy as doing a Google search.
"What popped up is 481,000 results on how to spoof a phone number and from there, there's videos here on You Tube on how to do it, there's instructionals, there's even a Wikipedia article that tells the basics of it," Burns said.
Phone number spoofing is one of the easiest tools a hacker has to break into your voicemail account. Spoofing allows the hacker to fool your cell phone carrier into thinking the call is coming from your cell phone.
If your voicemail is protected by a four-digit passcode, keep in mind a hacker could call your cell phone carrier and change your passcode with a few simple pieces of information.
"A lot of times it's just your name, your address and maybe the last four digits of your social and that's pretty easy information to come about these days," Burns said.
Some cellphone carriers don't require users to have a voicemail passcode to access their account. But Burns said that is a big mistake.
"You should call your cellphone carrier and aske them to put a password on your account," Burns said.
And, before you think your voicemail doesn't have a lot of valuable information on it, Burns said "it could be lots of little information. Names, addresses, banking information, everything is there a lot of times people leave sensitive information on their voicemail that they shouldn't."
Burns said the best way to protect yourself from voicemail hacking is deleting your messages right away, record a message asking that no personal information be left in a voicemail or turn off your voicemail function altogether.
Burns also recommends never using the generic passcodes provided by a cellphone carrier because those are the passcodes would-be voicemail hackers will try first.
For more information on CrunchGear, click here.
