How mobile phones get hacked
(Image by Flickr user Dominik Syka)
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“Caller ID spoofing” is just one of the tactics that News of the World hackers may have used to allegedly get into the phones of everyone from families of fallen soldiers to an abducted girl.
The spoofing allows one person to control how their phone number shows up in the caller ID of another, and trick a phone into giving access to its voicemail system.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray says that phones in the U.S. are more vulnerable if no password is required to get into voicemail. Some cell phone carriers require customers to use passwords, but AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile do not — though you can change the setting to employ a password, which Bray recommends doing.
Bray also says to choose a password that is not simple to guess. Do not, for example, choose the last four digits of your phone number, or the digits 1-2-3-4.
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