T-Mobile released a set of security tips for its customers on Saturday. T-Mobile is suggesting that customers change their passwords every 60 days, but has so far decided to let individual customers decide whether a password should be required to access their voice mail. Here’s what T-Mobile says about voice mail passwords:
T-Mobile cares about your privacy and wants you to be aware that your voice mailbox has a password security option that you can turn on or off.
Because many customers have asked for the security feature to be turned off– which allows speedy access to your voicemail messages– your mailbox is automatically setup to not ask you for your password.
T-Mobile recommends you turn on your VoiceMail password for added security, but as always, the choice is yours.
Maybe if T-Mobile mentioned that the automatic login feature of voice mail is only protected by the Caller ID number that comes in when you call the T-Mobile Voice Mail System, and that a number of services exist to allow anyone to spoof the Caller ID number that is delivered when a call is made, customers would conclude that the automatic login feature is a more significant risk than they realized.
I guess I don’t understand why they’ve opted to continue set new voice mail boxes to “no password required” by default. Does T-Mobile think that the initial call to voice mail where you set up your options and record your greeting is too complicated already?
I’ve turned on the password option on my T-Mobile voice mail accounts, and I think it’s a good idea for other T-Mobile users to do so as well.