Originally published November 27 2005
Cingular's voicemail contains glitch that can allow outside access
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The flaw can allow an outside party to access messages, change a current password and record outgoing messages. It is estimated the glitch will affect 26 million Cingular subscribers.
In effect, an outside party could access messages in the voice-mail account, change an existing password and record new outgoing messages.
During the past two weeks, Cingular, the country's largest cellular operator, has been moving its old Northern California Cingular customers to a voice-mail service provided by AT&T Wireless, which it acquired last year.
The process, which began earlier this year on the East Coast, has revealed a flaw that allows someone to gain control over a subscriber's voice-mail account if the outside party initializes it before the subscriber sets up his new account.
The migration affects the estimated 26 million Cingular subscribers who were on the old system prior to the merger with AT&T Wireless last year.
However, new Cingular customers -- or customers who have upgraded their service in the past year -- should have access to the new voice-mail system along with old AT&T Wireless users, Cingular spokeswoman Lauren Garner said.
Khalsa thought the problem was specific to his phone, but then he tried calling his wife, son and a friend's Cingular phones and was able to gain identical access.
Unsuspecting subscribers would not necessarily be tipped off that their voice-mail account had a new password or that someone had access to it.
If subscribers subsequently checked their voice-mail from their cell phone, which is how most users do it, they would bypass the password prompt and go directly into their voice-mail account, one of the new features being offered on the upgrade voice-mail system.
Garner said the company chose to shift its old Cingular customers to the AT&T voice-mail platform because it was more robust and offered more features like longer message and greeting recording lengths, Spanish-language service and the possibility of recording two outgoing messages.
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