The demise of the News of the World and on-going stories of phone hacking reveal the prevalence of this despicable practice.

As reports have shown, you do not have to be a celebrity to be a phone hacking target by unscrupulous individuals.  My advice, therefore, to anyone with a mobile is to protect and safeguard privacy with a PIN.

Hackers take advantage of apathy on the part of mobile phone users, their naivety or lack of knowledge.  If you have never set a PIN on your Voicemail you will be accessing messages through your mobile’s default number.  This is usually a simple four digit PIN such as 0000 or 1234. Here’s how phone hacking basically works.

A hacker can call your mobile directly, or via the mobile network’s specific access number.  Remember your mobile number may be in the public arena in a variety of ways (printed on your business cards/letterheads or available through social media networks).  Having dialled your mobile,  the hacker will then guess at your easy default PIN to access your messages.  These may be highly personal or contain important professional information.  Hackers can listen to new and saved messages and delete them.  

Essentially, the ease in accessing Voicemail means you cannot necessarily tell if your mobile has been hacked.  You would, however, have suspicions raised if someone you knew mentioned they had left you a message which you could not find on Voicemail.  This would indicate it had been deleted by a hacker.  You would also be suspicious if a message accessed by a hacker but not deleted was saved before you had actually listened to it.

If you have not already done so, set a PIN on your Voicemail now.  Choose at least four random numbers and avoid guessable dates of birth, or repetitive sequences such as 1212.  If you only ever access your Voicemail via your mobile you do not need to memorise your PIN as you can change it at will.  However, there are practical benefits to keeping and remembering it.  If you forget to take your mobile with you, or its battery is flat, you can still access its Voicemail messages from a landline via your secret PIN.  The added benefit being that no-one else can.

The major mobile networks have different methods for setting Voicemail PINs as explained recently in The Telegraph.

Contact me if you experience any difficulties and/or need advice in setting a Voicemail PIN on your mobile.

Image Credit: yisris