The News of the World phone hacking scandal that has developed rapidly over the few weeks has highlighted the need for everyone to be aware of their own personal security whether it is online or not. Just because most mobile phone voicemails are not secured by anything other than a default password does not excuse the user from changing it. For businesses using voicemail, the contents might be extremely sensitive and covered by the data protection act. Companies should take all reasonable precautions to protect the data. We secure all our voicemails provided for customers by a random 4-digit pin code - after 4 attempts at a login - new login tries are delayed by 5 minutes and we get notified of the login failures. Abuse of these mailboxes is extremely unlikely unless the pin code has been discovered - even so, we also log the phone number of the caller accessing the mailbox and can if requested block access from "number withheld" callers. We urge anyone using publicly accessible services to take adequate precautions to secure their own personal data.
