Voicemails on two U.K. mobile providers are wide open to being hacked

Voicemail inboxes on two UK mobile networks are wide open to being hacked. An investigation by The Register has found that even after Lord Leveson’s press ethics inquiry, which delved into the practice of phone hacking, some telcos are not implementing even the most basic level of security. Your humble correspondent has just listened to the private voicemail of a fellow Regjournalist’s phone, accessed the voicemail inbox of a new SIM bought for testing purposes, and the inbox of someone with a SIM issued to police doing anti-terrorist work. I didn’t need to use nor guess the login PIN for any of them; I faced no challenge to authenticate myself. There was a lot of brouhaha over some newspapers accessing people’s voicemail without permission, but one of the strange things about it all is that at no stage have any fingers been pointed at the mobile phone networks for letting snoops in. And some doors are still open.