Beware: your mobile phone’s voicemail may be at risk

MILLIONS of mobile phone voicemail boxes are at risk of being hacked into as the security of these accounts is not protected by proper legislation.

This is according to one of the country’s top security experts, Paul Dwyer, who said the current legislation covering access to private mobile phone voice messages is out-of-date.

Mr Dwyer, who has previously worked with the FBI and the US secret service, said Section 98 of the Postal and Telecommunications Service Act 1983 refers to the interception of messages and does not cover someone listening to messages. He said listening to another person’s voicemail would not be considered as interception because the material is already recorded.

“The onus is on each individual to make sure their personal information is secure,” he said.

ComReg also said there is no regulation in place that covers this practice. A spokeswoman said: “It is up to consumers to change the code if they want to and also up to the mobile operations to advise customers on the issue.

“In terms of regulation however there is none.”

Mr Dwyer also said software is being downloaded on-line regularly which enables a person to listen in on a another person’s mobile phone calls and even track where they are located.

“People need to be aware that this is now common practice and realise that they are very open to attack,” he said.

Open wireless network and bluetooth devices are also extremely vulnerable to attack, he added.

The office of the data protection commissioner contacted the country’s four mobile operators last week asking for information on the practice whereby strangers can hack into other peoples voicemail.

Many of the owners of the country’s five million mobile phones do not set the four-digit password on their voicemail which would deny strangers access to listen to their voicemail messages.