Voicemail hacking.

[perksie]

I was watching the BBC News today and they have been listening to a tape in a court case describing how a private investigator was able to phone O2 with a false name but the correct password (no idea how he got that) in order to succesfully get the pin to someone's voicemail reset to the default, so they could then play back and listen to their messages.

It's a pity they were allowed to continue without having the account holder's correct name, but I gather the thief had a very good line of chat.

I agree this is a difficult area and how they obtained the account password is unknown.

It goes to show that we really cannot be too careful with how we store our passwords and who might be able to gain access to them.

I use a password manager to store all mine under a master password that only I know.

There are quite a few apps and programs out there that can take care of this and I use LastPass on my pc and Colornote on my phone which seem to do the job well enough.

[perksie]

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@MI5 wrote:
I do wonder how many attempted attacks CS defend each day though...?

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It's a shame we will never know I bet it's more than we might guess.

[MI5]

Considering the number of emails I receive each day trying to con me out of info regarding bank accounts, Paypal and the like, I would assume many hundreds of fraudsters attempt to contact O2 daily.......

[perksie]

Yes it has to be around that sort of figure.

[Anonymous]

I agree in principle with both of you, but I have to say its a very painful and troubling issue when you've been subject to one of these O2 related hacks through no fault of your own.

Maybe the biggest problem is the way they deal with it afterwards, the apparent lack of transparency with the customer. The lack of willingness to offer what I would call reasonable compensation. If a member of my staff had exposed a clients private data in the way mine was exposed (for the time being something I can't reveal pending further investigations and a subject access request) we'd have been fined a fortune for the human mistake made in this instance.

My issue and complaint had a financial cost as well as the pain and worry it caused, the type of hacking this tread was 'I think referring to' was much more serious in that it involved access to someones voicemail and mislead a family in grief and unbelievable pain.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
I would assume many hundreds of fraudsters attempt to contact O2 daily.......

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With the amount of posts on here moaning from genuine customers about long wait's to get O2 customer services to answer the phone I doubt many fraudsters will bother to hang on waiting