

Ask HN: How did British "phone hacking" work, is it still a problem? - cschmidt

I've read a lot about the British "phone hacking" scandal. From what I've read, many people left their phone voice mail PIN to be the default, allowing News of the World to listen in.<p>I have an iPhone in the U.S.  As far as I know, I don't have a voice mail PIN. Do I? Was this something that only affected some phones? Was it a UK thing?<p>I figure some of you will know.
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bks
One of the bigger issues of the voicemail system is that they typically use
the phone number of the subscriber as an authentication token.

This means that if the voicemail system sees an incoming call from a specific
phone number it assumes that the phone number is authentic and allows access
to the voicemail system.

Simply by googling for "spoof phone number" you will find a host of services
that still provide this ability to people for a few bucks a month.

You should get in the habit of setting a pin number on your voicemail, and
most of them do support this (it is the way to pick up your messages when you
don't have your cell phone) - it is a little less convenient but good security
usually requires a change of habits.

